January is a rubbish month to make sensible decisions. It's dark, it's expensive, and by the time the credit card bill from Christmas lands, most of us are trying to talk ourselves out of buying things, not into them.
Last year, I bought a Mazda MX-5.
Not out of nowhere, exactly. I already owned a 1999 10th Anniversary model. But this was locked away in the garage over the winter months and I was craving some excitement. Winter was wearing me down, my commute felt like a chore, and I wanted something that made even a drive to work feel like an occasion.
The decision
I started looking at early ND MX-5s around the £12,000 mark, which felt like a lot of fun for the money. Then Mazda's finance deals did what good finance deals do, and my budget quietly crept upwards. I ended up with a 2021 MX-5 Sport Venture from a dealer in Derby — 22,000 miles, immaculate, £16,500. No deposit, about £250 a month.
The reality of owning a toy
As often happens with spontaneous purchases of convertibles, I didn't use it nearly as much as I thought I would. When you've already got a daily driver that's comfortable, cheap to run and loaded with everything you need, it's surprisingly easy to leave the toy in the garage. The MX-5 got used, and I genuinely loved every mile of it, but it stayed an occasional treat rather than a routine.
The sale
By summer, life had moved on. While chatting to a mortgage advisor about buying a house, he suggested that the MX-5 was a monthly payment I should probably consider cutting. So I put it through a Carwow auction — more out of curiosity than expectation — and a car supermarket bought it for £17,500. That cleared the finance outright and left a couple of grand spare, which went straight towards solicitor's fees. I'd only spent money on fuel, tax and insurance in that time — so I'm calling that a profit.
Getting lucky
I didn't do anything clever. The Sport Venture is a nice spec, but it's one of a long line of MX-5 special editions — nothing that makes it especially collectible. I just bought well and got lucky with timing.
I know that for a fact, actually, because I kept an eye on the listing afterwards. The dealer who bought it off me got stuck with it over winter and, as far as I could tell, ended up selling it on at a loss. At one point, a year after I'd bought it the first time, I seriously considered buying it back.
Would I do it again?
So no, this isn't a story about spotting an undervalued classic or timing the market like a pro. It's a story about buying something you actually wanted, from a trustworthy source, at a price that gives you a bit of room to move — and then not being precious about letting it go when life changes. Cars are rarely an investment but, with some shrewd purchasing, you can usually make the numbers stack up.