Mazda MX-5 RF 2.0 Skyactiv-G 2018 UK first drive

Cars that engage their drivers rarely if ever achieve it with power alone, and that’s a song Mazda has always sung heartily with the MX-5.

Too heartily, perhaps. Until now, the most powerful factory car touted just 158bhp from a 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine and so companies such as BBR GTI, whose sympathetically fitted turbo kits provide power enough to properly exploit the perfect weight distribution and rear-driven handling, have thrived.

That hasn’t gone unnoticed in Hiroshima, and for 2018, Mazda has revised this larger Skyactiv engine. (The 1.5-litre remains largely unchanged.) Mechanical modifications – including lighter pistons and conrods along with revisions to the camshaft, injectors, throttle valve and air intake – have increased its output to 181bhp and yet emissions have fallen with the adoption of an engine stop/start system.

Mazda has made no changes to the chassis – not publicly, at any rate – and the MX-5 retains its double-wishbone front and multi-link rear suspension with a passive spring and damper set-up at each corner. All 2.0-litre cars use a mechanical limited-slip differential, while those in range-topping Sport Nav+ and GT Sport Nav+ specifications also benefit from Bilstein dampers and a strut brace.

We’ve already driven this latest MX-5 on the legendary Transfagarasan, where it fared superbly, but now we have the opportunity to try the more versatile hard-top RF on UK soil.

The rural roads of Northern Ireland’s County Fermanagh provide all the examination potential a road tester could ever want or need. These roads are something else: cruelly twisting and endlessly undulating but always with a strong sense of flow. They’re roller-coaster roads along which you quickly learn to expect the unexpected and make adjustments, often substantial, on the fly.

We’ll start with the new engine because it’s this that transforms the MX-5 from being likeable with caveats to a seriously desirable device for people who love driving. And this is not solely because of the additional power, which doesn’t so much electrify progress as dispel the slight lethargy of earlier Mk4 cars. And that’s all we ever really wanted. Even more power would be nice, but the important thing is that never do you feel now as though you need it, or that you’re somehow missing out by not having it.

The lovely thing is that 181bhp in a sub-1150kg chassis also isn’t so much that you can’t stretch this engine right out, time and time again, to its new 7500rpm ceiling – some 700rpm higher than before. In second and third gears in particular, the final thousand of those crisply responsive revolutions seem to relay an extra energy on top of a base that’s already lean-sounding and wonderfully cammy in the manner of many older performance engines.