Budget Roadster Shootout - Make the Best Choice for Your Middle-Life Crisis Buy

Need more than one passenger seat? Bad luck. Got a bit carried away with your shopping? Time to call a friend with a bigger trunk. The road is full of potholes? Say "bye-bye" to your kidneys. Snow on the road? Good thing you have rear-wheel-drive. Oh, wait, it's not good at all.

Indeed, roadsters are great fun to drive, but in most situations, they need to be the third, sometimes even the fourth car in the family, and how many people can - or are willing to - afford that? That's why they are usually associated either with young bachelors who are just constantly looking for fun or with middle-aged guys who are going through the well-known crisis that makes them wish they were that young bachelor again.

For this reason, owning a roadster might even come with a bit of stigma as people will interpret the purchase as a desperate cry for attention. However, we feel like this type of vehicle really deserves better, so it's probably time we unite and revive this segment by buying one regardless of where we are with our lives - young or old, married or still roaming, with or without kids.

The good news is it doesn't necessarily require that much cash. Affordable options have always been around - the Mazda Miata has basically built its entire persona around that idea - and you can always dip into the used car market, but the question is which of the less expensive options is also the best one?

We'll skip the foreplay and go straight to the conclusion: there is no bad option. Well, at least not as far as this selection of three models is concerned. We're looking at a Honda S2000, the high-revving fun-mobile from Japan that still has us waiting for a contemporary version, the Mazda Miata (MX-5), potentially the first name that pops in everyone's mind when they think "affordable roadsters", and the Abarth 124 Spider, the Miata's sister model from Italy that takes the Japanese model's recipe and makes it better by adding a turbocharger.

There are no bad choices, but that doesn't mean one isn't better than the other. In terms of raw power, Honda's 2.0-liter is the stuff of legends, having been the naturally aspirated engine with the best power per liter output for years on end. It makes around 250 horsepower, though you really have to work it to get the most out of it, and the six-speed manual transmission is the perfect way to do it.

The other naturally aspirated engine here is the 2.0-liter Skyactiv-G in the Mazda Miata, though this one only puts out 160 hp at best. Like the VTEC unit, revving helps, though when it comes to power, you will always be left wanting more in the Miata. Luckily, there are plenty of aftermarket solutions to take care of that.

Last but not least we have the oddball of the group: the Abarth 124 Spider. Unlike its rivals, the Italian roadster gets not only a turbocharged engine but also a six-speed automatic transmission. Despite only having marginally more power than the Mazda, it's the torque and the more rapid shifts that help the 124 Spider pull away from the Miata in all tests. It also sounds miles better.