My mother has had two of them and they are very fun to drive -- even completely stock. The first was a 91 (how I learned to drive a manual transmission) and the second/current is a 2005. The newer one is more powerful (not sure how many HP but it seems significant) but I still prefer the older one. The design was peak 80s Japanese functional minimalism and there was no magic behind any of its features.

However, as it applies to the parent comment, I can't actually say too much about reliability, as both of them were driven primarily on weekends and _maybe_ 2K miles per year.

New manual miatas have transmissions that grenade themselves. miata.net has a whole forum dedicated to it: https://forum.miata.net/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=172