Here are some external shots of the car. I tried to put these in chronological order, so the newer ones are towards the bottom.

Here's one that I took in 2002 for an article I published on Speedoptions.com, for which I still do a lot of writing. There are several of my articles on the site, but if you want to read the one for which this picture was used, you can find it HERE. The top may be down, but it's winter. You can tell by the steel wheels. During the summer, I was running the stock 14" alloys with Dunlop SP8000's at that time.

Here are some pics taken at the Carlisle Import/Kit Car show in 2002. The Brainstorm low-profile headlights were removed soon after. I loved the look, but with all the city driving I was doing, and with the harsh R-Package suspension I had on the car at the time, I kept having to re-adjust and fix them. I sold them to a friend who mostly drives back roads, and she loves them to this day.

A few weeks later, I was doing some work on a friend's '95 M Edition, had the 15" BBS wheels off, and they inexplicably ended up on my car. So I took a pic. I had to give them back, though.

March 2003. I got antsy, and during a warm day, I put a set of polished 10AE Miata 15's on the car that I had purchased a few months prior with R-compound Khumo Victoracer tires. The 15's were sold the following winter (a friend begged me for almost a year), and were replaced with 16" Rota Slipstreams (pics below). And yes, the hardtop was really olive green, which was custom-painted to match a custom 1990 Miata of the same color that belonged to a friend. That car's last whereabouts was Baltimore, but the hardtop has since been sold to a Spec Miata builder.

March 2003. The hardtop's off, and a few of us from the Chesapeake Area Roadsters ran down to FedEx Field in DC to cheer on some fellow club members who were running in the SCCA autocross that day.

Here's a top-up pic from summer, 2003. Most of the decals were removed soon after. They don't show up, but they're an American flag, a Dunlop tire sticker (I ran Dunlops on the Miata up until 2003), and a decal from So-Cal Speed Shop just because I'm a hot rodder at heart. Heck, I even design them.

March, 2004. Here are the special edition 16x7 Rota Slipstreams, steel grey with a polished lip. They're wrapped in Falken FK451 tires sized 205/50-16 (don't get tires that size - they rub). The brakes you see are Powerslot rotors with EBC Green brake pads (all backed up by ATE Super Blue racing brake fluid).

June, 2004. Here are a couple that were taken just after a wax, and only a couple weeks before the car was sold.

March 2005. This is how the car looked when I bought it back. The previous owner had powdercoated the OEM 14" alloys and added chrome Altezza-style rear lights along with a ton of interior mods. She finally rear-ended a Cadillac in it, and when I disassembled the front end, it appeared the headlight assembly and the turn signal area took the brunt of the impact and moved everything about 1/2". A few days of measuring and beating on it with a hammer lined everything up again. The paint is still a bit worse for wear, though.

THE NEW WHEELS
July 2005. After a tire-shop screw up that led to badly damaging the powdercoat on the 14's, I bugged a friend enough to finally sell me his Rays/Volk TE37's, measuring 16x7. My wife and I had admired these wheels for a number of years on his car, and I finally got the nod. I always figured I'd probably be buried with these, but I needed to sell them in June, 2006. They'd been on the car a total of 6 days. The car was on a retrofitted OEM suspension from a '97 Miata, so that's why it sits so high.

December 2005. The car still needed to get lowered, but by now I had replaced the HD Sport bar with a real HDHCDD roll bar with a Hard Dog harness bar installed as well. I've also added the black chevrons on the fender and fixed and repainted the broken TSI's. On it's best day, the car's still a 20-foot car, but I decided to take some quick pics anyway.

THE NEW SUSPENSION
March 2006. It's been 10 years since I bought this car, and it's finally time the Miata had an attitude (and altitude) adjustment.

A friend of mine parted out a Miata, and sold me a set of Ground Control coilovers with Eibach springs, Mazda NB shock mounts (gives a little more travel), and I've sourced a used set of Koni adjustable dampers from another friend. I needed to get some new collar internals from Ground Control and replace the set screws on the collars. I'm currently recovering from surgery, so the suspension install is on hold. Once it gets done, be sure to keep an eye out for updated pics.

July 2006. Got the front Konis on (with stock springs), and the rears will go on soon. Until them, I'm running the Redneck Roadster look (low in front, jacked up in the rear). I was doing a quick wheel trade with a friend, and really liked the way the 14" BBS wheels looked on the car. Pity I'll have to return them in a few days.