She says, he says: Mazda MX-5

The car: Mazda MX-5 Coupe Sports

The price: $49,805 plus on-road and dealer costs

The details: 2.0-litre 4-cyl petrol engine; 118kW, 188Nm; 8.1L/100km and 192g/km C02; 6-sp manual; RWD.

He

Mazda has updated the MX-5 with a facelift to bring it in line with the brand's “Kodo” corporate look. It now has a new bumper and some small changes to the feel of its throttle and brake pedals. They aren't significant changes, but then again this is a delicately balanced car.

She

It certainly is a finely honed machine. I use the original MX-5 as a design case study to show students how emotional function – the satisfying weight of a closing door, the happy audio of a tweaked engine note – is important to retail success. I am also constantly impressed that the Mazda engineers continue to drop the weight of the car – did you know that the folding hardtop is a mere 3kg heavier than the fabric version?

He

That's an impressive statistic, though I don't know if that hardtop works for me. I like to sit fairly upright in the seat and found my head rubbing against the MX-5's roof from time to time . . . and I'm barely six feet tall. It's quite cosy in the cockpit, and there are few places to stash things. Is it a car you could live with?

She

Well, Dave, I did live with the first-generation MX-5 for almost two years, but I had way less baggage then . . . I've always thought it curious that a car seating two has four cupholders but no useful gadget storage. Maybe that's the way Mazda's engineers are preventing us adding our own weight to the car? I really think this is a car for a person who loves to drive, and has an unfettered length of road as part of their daily commute. I drove mine up the Old Pacific Highway for site visits and I absolutely felt Mazda's concept of Jinba ittai, meaning "horse and rider as one". In traffic, though, its a little too pure and minimal and I can imagine feeling possibly a bit hemmed in after a while.

I'm going to throw a fox in here: I think the 2012 Drive Car of the Year, Toyota's 86, and its sibling, the BRZ, with their MX-5-like balance, keen pricing and extra room, might be the first serious challenger to the MX-5 sovereignty. Mainly because of the price. How do you find the current MX-5 pricing?

He

At $49,885, the model we drove is almost $20,000 more than the Toyota 86 GT. That's a fair chunk of change, though the MX-5 is much cheaper than other compact rear-wheel-drive convertibles such as the BMW Z4 and Mercedes-Benz SLK. I had the pleasure of driving the 86 back-to-back with the MX-5 and found they were quite different driving experiences, with the Mazda proving much grippier than the Toyobaru. The MX-5 at times feels more polished than the 86, and as you would know there is nothing quite like a convertible on a sunny day.

She

You make many good points – the crux being that a coupe vs convertible is apples and oranges. And I agree the MX-5 has a performance edge on the Toyota/Subaru plaything, but what I really loved about the original MX-5 was the purity of its design and the keenness of its pricing. I am not sure the average person can afford to zoom-zoom like they once could and for me that's a shame. I suggested the MX-5 to a friend exiting an original Audi TT, but she thought it didn't have enough "luxe" about it for a $50k price tag so she went for the Benz. For my money I would borrow it for the weekend, but otherwise I might wait, salivating, til 2014 for the all-new collaboration with Alfa Romeo, and a car that will stylistically bring it to the Euros.