Buy the project car - what do you call a longing once you finally get to live it?

Summer of 2012. I've just come of age, I've finished school, and my first car is in the works. Me - mostly for the fun of it, since I was one of the lucky ones, but also to pocket a bit of spending money - I'm working at a friend's car wash. An eighteen-year-old petrolhead, you see. I lasted barely a month washing Peugeot 206s and Suzuki Swifts filthier than a free-range pig. Long story short, my friend was selling a Mazda MX-5 NBFL back then. Lowered, with a roll cage and - for the real anoraks - a Trilogy Edition. Wrapped in matte khaki, with wheels at almost zero offset, pretty aggressive for the time. And me, a kid straight out of karting. What could be better than an MX-5 for a first car?

The deal that lasted an afternoon.

One thing led to another, and one day my father came to see it at the car wash. He took it for a drive, all good, handshakes, and we said we'd go ahead. For me the matter was already settled. That same night I was looking up keyrings, my first mods, and of course I'd already started imagining where I'd take it for its first top-down drive. Only the plans were different.

My brother, my mother, and the end before it even began.

That same night my brother comes home. Just as sick for cars, and having lived first-hand the golden era of 2002-2009 - with street races, the Carrefour, Nitra, and all those things that today sound like urban legends of another Thessaloniki. The moment he hears "MX-5", he corners my parents. "The kid will get himself killed in that car. No electronic aids, rear-wheel drive - first rain and he'll wrap it around a lamp post." You can imagine the rest. A classic Greek mother, having already been through what she'd been through with my older brother, now wanted above all to protect her own peace of mind. "Sweetheart, you're not buying a car that old. We'll put in a bit more and you'll get something newer and safer." And just like that, the MX-5 was gone before it ever arrived. The rest of the story you know. I got a Mini Cooper S. And in the end, everything happens for a reason.

The bug never left.

Fast-forward to 2022. Angelos had grown up. Wiser, not so much. And the bug for that two-seat, rear-drive, perfectly balanced Japanese roadster had never left. Back then I was driving a boring Range Rover Evoque. Don't ask me why. I don't know. So I was desperate for a little action. An exhaust note. A bit of turn-in. A petrol-fed growl. Something, anyway, to remind me that driving can be more than getting from A to B. And somewhere around there, one afternoon while cruising around Toumba, I saw it. An almost abandoned Mazda MX-5 NA. The old one. With the pop-up lights that, after years of us calling them old-fashioned, had suddenly started becoming cool again. Faded red. Old ministry plates. JR wheels, roll cage, torn seats, half-stripped bits inside, and an exhaust that had probably started life on a moped. Some abandoned project, I thought. It deserves a little love. And right there I was already picturing myself as some superhero, showing up to save the poor project, diving willingly into the costs and the headaches. "It's a model from my decade," I thought. I'd already started finding arguments to justify to myself what, deep down, I'd already decided. Long story short: if I hadn't made the mistake, we wouldn't even be talking now.

"It's good, but it needs a bit of work"

Somehow it all happened easily. The MX-5 was signed over to my name and, almost before I could grasp what I'd done, it was up on its first workshop ramp. "It's good overall, but it needs a bit of work," said Christos, a friend and mechanic. You know those classic mechanic's phrases. It's something like "I'll be there in five minutes." Nobody knows exactly what they mean. We started with the essentials. Consumables, a basic service, and we'll see. "It's a Japanese," I said. "It runs on its own. It doesn't ask for much." And, to my surprise, it proved me right. With a simple service we were out on the road. And it was exactly the go-kart I'd been waiting ten years for.

First, the interior. A Sparco steering wheel and a bucket seat. I'd always wanted it. To open the door of a car of my own, to sit down in a bucket, to have the roll cage behind my head and strap myself in with a four-point harness. Bless Marketplace and the friends with whom, instead of just drinking coffee, we'd browse listings for car parts. Luckily, the costs stayed relatively small. You can find parts for a Miata almost anywhere - even at a corner kiosk. A bit like the old BMW E30, E36 and E46.

Miata Vice

And if, at this very moment as you read this, that project you've been eyeing for months has already popped into your head, I'll be the good-bad little devil on your shoulder and tell you: Do it. Not even a week had passed and I'd already started bonding with it. Because it did me its favours without asking much in return. Nice to drive, cheap to maintain and, thankfully, it was November, so the total lack of air conditioning could still be branded "character". I decided to paint it. Again at relatively small cost. And suddenly the abandoned, faded red Mazda I'd found in Toumba had transformed. I had a little convertible for drives, with a bucket, roll cage, lowered suspension, wings and spoilers, go-kart handling - and all of it for less than €5,000. In other words: Miata Vice.

And then came the track.

Somewhere around there, the next bad idea was born in me. To take it on track. So: a decent set of tyres, brake pads, braided lines and, luckily for my wallet, the car was already on coilovers. Without much fuss, we ended up at Rysio. A familiar circuit for me. Only this time I wasn't inside a kart. But I put on my helmet, strapped into the bucket, and went out on track in a 1,600cc Japanese go-kart that, for some inexplicable reason, had licence plates. My first contact with a car on track. And I could hardly have picked a better teacher. The Miata didn't have the horsepower to scare you. It didn't try to hide your mistakes behind electronics and huge tyres. But it had brakes, balance, and that simplicity that let you understand exactly what was happening beneath you. To try. To get it wrong. To learn. And to try again. Little by little it became a habit. We'd gather as a group, drink our coffee, and I'd take my road-going go-kart, head to the track, go out, play, and then drive home in the same car. Full. Not of lap times and fast laps. Of the whole process. That's how we lived together for about six months, with an almost trouble-free record. An idle-control motor here, some electrics that decided now and then to remember their age, and a few more small reminders that I was driving a three-decade-old car. Nothing that really mattered, though. Because in the end, ten years after that afternoon at the car wash, I'd managed to live out the longing. Only it turned out the MX-5 was never the real longing. It was everything that came with it.

Buy the project car.

The hours in the workshop. The nights on Marketplace. The messages to friends for a spare part. The coffees around an open hood. The first time on track. The people I met. The dumb decisions that became great memories. Because a project car is never just an old car. And it's certainly not a sensible purchase. It'll break. It'll wind you up. It'll cost a little more than you reckoned, and at some point you'll find yourself waiting on a part you didn't even know existed, wondering why you didn't just buy something new, with a warranty and CarPlay. But that's exactly the beauty of it. Because cars have this strange ability to get us out of the house. To send us to places we'd otherwise have no reason to go. To introduce us to people we'd otherwise never meet. And somehow, you start out looking for a steering wheel, a set of wheels or an idle-control motor and, without realising it, you end up collecting something far more important than parts. You collect stories. So if you too have that listing saved on your phone, if every so often you pass an abandoned car and turn your head, or if for years you've been saying "one day I'll get one and fix it up"… Do it. Buy that project car. Fix it. Break it. Fix it again. Put miles on it. Get on track. Get lost on a drive for no reason. Drink coffees in workshops. Meet people. Get in a little deeper than you planned. Because one day you probably won't remember how much that set of wheels cost. But you will remember who was with you when you went to get it. And maybe that, in the end, is the reason these cars are worth having. Not just to have something to drive. But to have something to live. Because through them we have stories to tell and people to meet. And somewhere in the middle of it all, without realising it, we become a little better ourselves. That, after all, is what Groundspeed is. We just started writing our own stories. Now we're waiting for yours.