Driving Through 25 Cities Is A Great Way To Celebrate 25 Years Of The Mazda MX-5

When it comes to showing off how much you love a car, driving it around Europe for its birthday is a pretty good place to start. That’s exactly what Joao and Afonso Pires - two Portuguese CT readers - decided to do with an MX-5 last year. The idea was to drive through 25 cities to celebrate 25 years of the little Mazda roadster.

The brothers started in Lisbon, Portugal, stopping off in Coimbra and Porto before heading through Spain (Madrid and Zaragoza), France (Bordeaux, Le Mans, Paris), England (London), Belgium (Brussels), Germany (Leverkusen, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich), Austria (Salzburg) and Italy (Garda and Milan). As the loop began to conclude, they headed back through France, stopping off in Monaco, Cannes and Marseille, before heading back into Spain for stops in Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla. The trip concluded in Lisbon 10 days later, after a stop in the ancient Portuguese city of Évora.

As was to be expected with a 23-year-old car, the trip wasn’t smooth. As the first day ended in Madrid, repairing a cracked coolant expansion tank slowed progress, and then it was straight into 40-degree desert heat with no air conditioning. After many miles through France, England and Belgium, the trusty MX-5 was given a free oil change at Mazda’s European headquarters in Leverkusen. It was then on to the snaking tarmac of the Stelvio Pass, where they were greeted by snow at the top!

Fortunately southern Europe proved largely uneventful, and they made it back without incident 250 hours after they’d left. It’s the sort of road trip all petrolheads should attempt at least once in their lives, and we tip our hats to them! Check out some more photos from the trip below.