Electric NA or all the bells-and-whistles ND: on which MX-5 would my £35,000 (ish) go? Honestly, it’s the new one. But it’s closer than I thought it would have been.

The ‘NA’ you see here is indeed an electric car. When I wrote about it before, it garnered fury from the world of car bores. “Not a propa MX-5,” sang the chorus of middle-aged men in the online comments. But it ’s the real McCoy, rather than a soyboy.

The good folk at Oxfordshire based Electrogenic have ripped out the old 1.6 -litre four-banger and replaced it with a single electric motor powering the rear wheels. It makes 160bhp and 229lb ft of torque. Range is said to be in the region of 160 miles and, no, it ’s not a manual.

The ND Mazda MX-5 here is top banana in the range, called the Homura. To recap, up front is the familiar 181bhp 2.0 -litre atmo engine.

At the back, it’s kept simple with the regular fabric hood, not the fancy metal roof of the MX-5 RF. There are also 17in BBS alloy wheels, Recaro seats, a Bose sound system, Bilstein dampers, a limited-slip differential, a track mode and Brembo calipers.

Ostensibly, the ND stays closer to Mazda’s original 11-herbs-and-spices recipe than Electrogenic’s NA – perhaps just extending the ingredients list to 13 or 14 and adding a bit of kick.

The EV doesn’t stray too far from the 11, but it does change one of the vital elements, that of course being the powertrain. 

Its instant torque is doled out via an open diff with no traction control whatsoever. This was fine for the original 115bhp NA, but for the EV, complete with skinny eco tyres at the rear, things get slidey really quickly.

It gets Eco, Normal and Sport modes that dispense differing levels of performance. Eco gives roughly the same zap as a regular petrolpowered NA; Normal is a bit like a 2.0 -litre NC; while Sport offers enough pep to keep up with the ND – on paper, at least. 

Off paper, the instant shove from the motor overwhelms the tyres if you dare use more than 50% throttle on anything other than bone-dry Tarmac.

With the ND, you have to work a lot harder for the power, which frankly is quite a lot more satisfying. You really need to hit 7000rpm to get the most out of it, and of course you get to shift through the six gears to keep the engine in that sweet rev band.

It’s slightly ironic that the dinojuice car is more technologically advanced. It has a slippy diff and a clever track mode – which in the winter, on the short circuit at Bicester Heritage, really flattered my driving. I’m no great drifter, but you may have been fooled. It lets go progressively and only really steps in if you’re getting very, very loose.

The electric NA will spin an inside wheel for days (I’m certain that I could lay a one-tyre fire for the entirety of its 160 -mile range), whereas the ND grips and grips and loosens gradually.

Truth be told, both MX-5s were extraordinarily fun to rag around a tight circuit on a greasy day. But both are pretty different to drive from one another and different again from the original NA.

There’s little sense running this as a strict either/or scenario, because the cars are so dissimilar. They both offer something unique.

The EV is absolutely absurd. At the time of writing, I still don’t know how much it costs, but it’s likely to be even more than the top-spec, brand-spankers ND and probably the price of six or seven really nicely sorted regular NAs. And it will do only 160 miles on a charge.

It’s probably a touch quicker, but it ’s less fun and satisfying than the ND, because there are no gears to change, no engine to rev and no delayed gratification. It makes some nice, industrial-sounding whirrs and, believe it or not, it feels quite mechanical. Plus digitisation is kept to a real minimum, with neat touches such as the battery gauge tucked away in the glovebox.

This comparison is all a bit academic, of course, because the ND could be a one-car solution, whereas the EV isn’t even a second car; it’s a third or fourth one.

Most importantly, though, the light, communicative steering, judged-to-perfection seating position and near-50:50 weight distribution I love about MX-5s are found in both of these cars. Phew.