So there's nothing really stealthy about a Mazda MX-5 with some swords taped on, but it sure can slice the crap out of some fruit.

Sure, bump drafting was a staple at Nascar's Daytona 500 (before the new Gen-Six cars), but for Daytona 24 qualifying? Won't those high-falutin' sporty-car drivers spill Beluga caviar all over their kid-skin driving gloves?

The original Mazda Miata started a "roadster revival." The 2006 car, renamed as the MX5, transforms that all into a sports car movement that will continue to thrive for years to come.

Earlier this month at this year's 25 Hours of Thunderhill endurance race, one of C.J. Wilson's Mazda MX-5 racecars was in P4 with three hours to go when the engine went. Another team might have just said screw it. Not these guys.

The Mazda MX-5 is a car that, in some circles — including this one — has reached sainted status. it's the mother-car, the "answer to every Question of the Day," as some say, the only pure sports car for the middle class built in the past two decades. Or so you might believe.

How can an independent Mazda survive to zoom-zoom another day? Alliances. Like, say, loaning its robust roadster tech to the Italian brand that once defined the genre as "fun but flimsy"? Yes, Mazda's inked a deal that could see the next MX-5 become an Alfa Romeo spider, and we couldn't be happier.

Note to the anonymous London rioter who set fire to this first generation Mazda Miata in the Borough of Hackney: Don’t. Just don’t.

Mazda will only build 750 of these MX-5 Special Editions, essentially loaded models with some special paint colors. Outside of an auto show, this may be about as close as you can get to the $30,000 version of l'il Smiley.

To mark the sale of 900,000 Mazda MX-5s and Miatas, as well as disguise the aging parts underneath, Mazda will offer a 750-vehicle special edition MX-5, with all the available suspension goodies and a limited-slip differential standard.