► Lease a Mazda MX-5 1.5 Sport from £293pm
► The king of cost-effective sports cars
► Choose from a 1.5 or 2.0-litre four-pot
Cost-effective sports cars don’t come much more attractive than the latest MX-5. The sharp styling hasn’t won everyone over, but it clothes an obsessively weight-optimised structure – great for handling, performance and mpg. Add in an amazingly easy-to-use manual soft-top, decent boot and ergonomically sound cabin, and you can see why there are already plenty on the road.
The 1.5 has high-revving character, but if you crave speed the 2.0’s extra 29bhp knocks a whole second off the 0-62mph time; the bigger engine also gets a limited-slip diff as standard. Entry SE spec is basic, so aim for at least the creature comforts of SE-L, which includes one of the best budget infotainment systems around and optional Nav. Sport crams in more toys, black wheels and on the 2.0-litre adds Bilstein dampers, but these are bouncy so take a test drive first.
One we found
Finance type: Third-party PCH
Deposit: £1761.34
Monthly fee: £293.56
Terms: 48 months /10,000 miles per year
Optional final payment: n/a
The specs: Mazda MX-5 1.5 Sport
Price: £21,845
Engine: 1496cc 4-cyl, 129bhp @ 7000rpm, 111lb ft @ 4800rpm
Performance: 8.3sec 0-62mph, 127mph, 47.1mpg, 139g/km CO2
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Find hundreds of thousands of deals in our brand new leasing section – carmagazine.co.uk/car-leasing
Read more from the March 2016 issue of CAR magazine