Hello all,

I'm Sophie, 27yrs old, English but living in France.
I'm currently sales manager for a company in the south of France, we specialize in Honda/Mitsubishi tuning, be it mapping or building 500hp+ Honda Civics or Honda K20 Lotus Elise.

Anyway, my baby is a 1996 1.8 Miata/MX5, for the moment she's my daily drive but I'm working on suspension & brakes, and getting rid of the extra weight to get her on track.
Next step I think will be V8. I don't want to do what everyone else does in Europe and fit a turbo or a supercharger, and from what I've seen/heard, I want a V8 So i'm looking into the different kits, how I'll have to organise the transport to engine & kit back to France, or even wondering if I'll keep mine as she is, and buy a complete pre swapped car in the USA.

This is Suki, as she stands at the moment :








Soph

 

Welcome to v8miata.net EnfantTerrible.

Click here to check out the latest thread pictures.

Hope to see you around v8m and enjoy your stay :)

 

Hi Soph,
I'm so glad you posted up a intro thread, we've been having a bit of a spam situation here as of late and had I run your ISP before you posted I may have thought you were a French spammer!

There is at least one 5.0 swapped V8 Miata running around the U.K. I sold him a TFI kit last year. Assuming you can get your hands on a Ford 5.0 engine you should be able to do it.
I would think the effort involved with getting a pre-swapped car over and registered in the UK and then taking it to France may be harder and more expensive than having the parts shipped over to convert yours. You're going to have to look very carefully into which will work out easier for you.

Good luck with this, I can't wait to see how it works out!

-Jason

 

Hi guys,

Quick update.

Have now fitted slightly better brakes (will have to change pads, shouldn't have fitted Brembo...), HEL brake lines, Gaz Gold Pro shock coilovers, TR Lane roll bar, and Toyo T1R

She looks so much better now that she's lowered !


Anyway, we decided to try her out on track. The French Lotus club organised a track day on the Catalunya F1 track, so we went down with the Elise and the Miata.



Great fun had by all, in the end, I was about 15sec slower than S2 Elises, with the Toyota engine (60bhp more than my Miata - same weight), who were all driving with semi slicks. So I'm happy, and proud of my little car.

Will keep you posted, but I won't be going V8 this year. I've just decided that being self employed was the way to go, so I'm going to be careful about what I'm spending over the next year and a bit !

Soph

 

Wow great looking car and even better the way you are putting her to good use! Thanks for posting!!

 

Thanks, I'm doing my best to keep her in good shape. With over 130 000miles on the clock, and having spent years in the UK, the bodywork needs some work because of the rust, I'll get round to that later, when I've got a replacement car for every day driving...