It was back in the year 1991 when Japanese automaker by the name of Mazda created history when it became the first ever Japanese automaker to have won 24 Hours of Le Mans. By the dint of the Mazda 787B No. 55 and by the expertise of the team that consisted of Johnny Herbert, Volker Weilder and Bernard Gachot, the 1991 triumph of the Japanese automaker proved to the world that the Japanese are not just mere competition, they were way beyond that and had capability to grab the topmost position.
After a span of Rip van Winkle’s sleep years post their victory, the Japanese automaker is on the verge of releasing a limited edition of MX-5 Miata, which they have quite aptly christened as the ’55 Le Mans edition. Though available only in Switzerland, this special version named MX-5 makes its appearance in four different exterior paints – red, gray, white and black. The profile strips in contrast to the body color run the length of the sides of the coupe. To top it off, Mazda incorporated in the sedan a new Bilstein sports suspension, a front strut bar, a limited slip differential (LSD), a set of 10 spoke alloy wheels. The interiors of the special edition car had Mazda dressing it up with the customized ’55 Le Mans’ stamps to go with the numbered sign to distinctively point to its production number.
There is no improvement assimilated into the car’s performance which implies that the same 2.0 liter engines will power the coupe and the same familiar 160 HP will be produced in collaboration with a six speed manual transmission.
While it really is sad that the ’55 le Mans Edition’ MX-5 is made available only to the lucky Swiss people, we can presumably say that even with the minimal touch ups the Mazda MX-5 Miata will still look gorgeous enough to the onlookers.
Source: topspeed
