On the early forums back when the Mazdaspeed Miata was first being sold a number of accidents or misfortunes always seemed to happen to the Titanium Grey cars. I believe the thinking at the time was the grey cars blended into the background whereas the red cars were much more visible. However, the very limited stats I have re: salvage cars doesn't support that theory today.

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I have been able to document 304 salvage MSMs to date which I would guess might be at best 50% of the total. Keeping that in mind the breakdown of salvage cars by colour is as follows:

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Black Mica      -   25       8.2 % of 304 total reported

Lava Orange   -   30     10.1 % of 304 total reported

Titanium Grey  - 131     43.1 % of 304 total reported

Velocity Red    - 118      38.8 % of 304 total reported

Total Salvage     304

 

See, there are more salvage Titanium Grey cars

 

What do these results mean?

Nothing really, the lower number of produced cars (Black Mica and Lava Orange) naturally have lowest salvage totals while the other two colours (Titanium Grey and Velocity Red) are similar in production totals and number of salvage cars with the Titanium Grey having more salvage cars.

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However, the interesting part comes when compared to production totals for each individual colour. Although the Titanium Grey cars were the highest number produced they have the lowest salvage rate. Myth debunked.

 

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Black Mica         6.1 % of total production

Lava Orange      7.6 % of total production

Titanium Grey    5.1 % of total production

Velocity Red       5.8 % of total production 

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