Mazda’s plucky little MX-5 Miata, a car birthed unto the world in 1989 as a reliable, well-made remaster of the classic British roadster formula, may be small, but its production numbers have been big. Well, big for a two-seat roadster that’s been in continuous production for 27 years. After all, this is a car distinctly lacking in the universal appeal (and nameplate longevity) of autodom’s all-time sales leader, the Toyota Corolla. Yet on April 22, the Miata’s production-number odometer clicked over to a new milestone when the 1,000,000th Miata rolled off the production line in Hiroshima, Japan.
Averaged out, this production milestone means that Mazda has sold 37,037 Miatas globally per year since 1989, numbers that in their own right might not sound that impressive. Last year, for example, Ford sold 780,354 F-series trucks. But consider that the Miata is tiny, can only hold two humans and perhaps 75 percent of their luggage, and has a folding roof. Oh, and it has only been fully redesigned three times since 1989. The only other modern vehicle with similar lasting power between widely spaced redesigns is the ever-popular Jeep Wrangler. Mazda’s Miata production crossed the 531,000 mark in 2000, the year it was declared the world’s bestselling roadster of all time, meaning it’s taken about five years longer to build the latest half-million Miatas than it did the first batch. Some may consider that a sign of waning interest in...