The little green frog I’ve been piloting roughly 30 miles a day has proven itself wonderfully usable, especially for a convertible its size. I thought daily-driving this car would get tiring, but no, it’s been awesome. Just plain awesome.
Okay, so I’ll begin by addressing one of the biggest complaints about the MR2 Spyder: There isn’t tons of storage space. But it’s not really that bad; if two people went on a weekend getaway and packed efficiently, they could make this car work. I was by myself the other day, and I managed to shove a big check-in bag and a backpack on the passenger’s side:
In the Midship Runabout 2-seater’s frunk, I stuffed four wheel hubs and two shock absorbers:
And then behind the front seats there was even more room. Easily enough for two small backpacks:
So the storage space is just adequate, but there’s still plenty that makes this car practical: namely, the car’s mechanical simplicity.
There’s really not a whole lot that can go horribly wrong with the MR2. Sure, some model years are prone to an issue involving exhaust catalyst being ingested into the engine through the exhaust gas recirculation system, but still, what powers the third-gen MR2 is a version of the 1ZZ 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine found in your average, everyday Toyota Corolla of the era. The C-family five-speed manual transmission bolted to that motor is also similar to the Corolla’s.
This is a good thing; these are tried-and-true components, meaning you should expect to be able to drive an MR2 day in and day out for many years, raking up 200,000+ miles on the original drivetrain if you take decent care of the vehicle. But even if you don’t take good care of the MR2, and you have to source a new transmission or rebuild the old one (as the previous owner of Andreas’s car did), parts are plentiful and cheap.
On top of its simplicity, the MR2 I was driving has wheels wrapped in tires with pretty tall sidewalls, and the vehicle’s ground clearance isn’t bad, either. This, combined with a fairly short sub-13-foot overall length means maneuvering into tight parking spots that require driving onto curbs is no issue at all.
Not to mention, at around 30 MPG, fuel economy is decent, too, which is good given the $5-per-gallon fuel costs here in Germany.
So what we have in the MR2 Spyder is a practical, reliable, efficient, and easy-to-maintain mid-engine sports car, and while it’s not particularly powerful at ~140 horsepower, the car only weighs just over a ton, and with the engine behind the driver? Well, that brings me to my next point.