There are lots of ways of getting more power out of a Mazda MX-5. You could turbocharge it, or supercharge it, or perform any one of a vast number of fairly common engine swaps. Or, if you’re German MX-5 tuning specialist SPS Motorsport, you could retain part of the car’s core character – a small, rev-happy naturally aspirated four-cylinder – and work to squeeze as much power out of it as possible.
That’s just what SPS has done with a track-built ND MX-5, which has been documented by the excellent YouTube channel OneLapHeroes. The car began life as a regular 2.0-litre MX-5, and SPS set out around two years ago with a view to squeezing 200bhp from its little four-cylinder engine.
If this all sounds a bit like another rear-drive Japanese roadster with an atmospheric four-pot, that’s no coincidence: SPS calls the tuning setup the ‘S2000 package’. Thanks to some “crazy aggressive” cams, improved cooling and a custom exhaust, the company reckons the car is pushing around 223ps and 280nm of torque – that’s 220bhp and 207lb ft.
Those are some rather impressive gains over a standard MX-5 2.0’s 181bhp and 151lb ft. The changes have also seen the engine’s redline raised to around 8100rpm, up from the standard car’s already impressive 7500rpm limit.
SPS Motorsport modified Mazda MX-5 on the Nürburgring
Elsewhere, it’s wearing some fairly serious aero bits, a two-way suspension setup with race-style uniball joints in place of rubber bushings, and a carbon roof originally developed for the ND’s Italian cousin, the Abarth 124 Spider. Some of these changes help keep weight down to around 980kg.
After a tour of the car, we’re treated to an on-board lap as it gets absolutely sent around the Nürburgring, raspy four-pot singing away. It’s a very amusing demonstration – as if it needed proving any more – that modest power and low weight is just as effective a combination as a heavy, powerful sledgehammer of a car.
