For two decades, despite challenges here and there, Mazda's MX-5 Miata has owned the popular-priced sports car market.

It was a sensation when it appeared in 1990 as the embodiment of the traditional open two-seater, dominated for generations by roadsters and convertibles from Great Britain. They included the Austin-Healey Sprite, 100 and 3000; Lotus Elan; MG TC, TD, A, B and Midget; Triumph TR and Spitfire, and Sunbeam Alpine and Tiger.

All offered top-down exhilaration with a low center of gravity and quick handling, and sometimes even decent performance. What they had in common, aside from complicated convertible tops and owner affection and loyalty, was a lack of reliability. Frequent breakdowns required drivers to function as part-time mechanics.

The Miata changed all that. Suddenly, after a hiatus of many years, people could buy a low-priced, rear-wheel drive, well-performing sports car with the characteristic monkey wrench-like reliability of the Japanese cars that were starting to gobble up an increasing share of the U.S. auto market.

Since then, the Miata has been challenged only occasionally, most seriously in recent years by the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky. Toyota's mid-engine MR2 Spyder was a credible alternative but came and went because of a lack of luggage space.

With the bankruptcy of General Motors, including the potholing of Pontiac and sale of Saturn, the futures of both the Sky and Solstice are in question. In 2008, at the start of a down market, Mazda sold 10,977 MX-5 Miatas. That compared to 10,739 Solstices and 9,162 Skys.

Meanwhile, Mazda relentlessly tweaks the Miata. For 2009, a dozen versions are available, including models with soft tops and folding hard tops. The focus here is the hard top Grand Touring model with the six-speed manual gearbox.

No longer can you buy a Miata for around $14,000, as you could 20 years ago. The cheapest base car with a fabric convertible top and five-speed stick shift now checks in at $22,420, and the top-line Grand Touring hard top with an automatic transmission starts at $29,960.

Options can kick the price up even higher. The test car had a starting price of $28,860, which included antilock brakes, tire-pressure monitoring, side air bags, automatic climate control, leather upholstery and shift knob, heated seats, 17-inch alloy wheels, cruise control, power windows and mirrors, and an audio system with a six-disc in-dash CD changer.

It also had two options packages that added stability and traction control, a sport-tuned suspension system, keyless entry, Bluetooth hands-free communication, Xenon headlights and Sirius satellite radio. They brought the suggested sticker price to a whopping $31,010.

That's more than the $30,650 starting price of the 2009 Nissan 370Z coupe, which boasts a 332-horsepower V6 engine linked to a six-speed manual gearbox. The Miata has about half that -- a 167-horsepower, 2-liter four-cylinder engine.

But sports cars, especially those that can drop their tops, are not necessarily about blazing performance. In today's environment, there are not many places short of a racetrack where you can legally blast down straight roads and careen through tight corners.

A Miata can do that, of course, though not as rapidly as a Z car. But it is suited more for driving finesse, top down at relaxed speeds, especially on a beautiful spring or fall day that is not too hot. The pleasure comes from carving the curves, shifting up and down, and feeling the fingertip feedback from the steering and suspension system.

With the hard top Grand Touring model, you get all that enjoyment with the fallback knowledge that, at a whim or when the weather turns bad, you can enjoy the cozy ambiance of a tight little coupe. To get there, it's a simple matter of releasing an overhead lever and touching a button. The hard top pops up and folds away behind your shoulder blades.

Usually, hard top convertibles eliminate luggage space because the top folds into the trunk. But the Mazda engineers, who only had to deal with a small two-seater, managed to design a cubby for the top that did not interfere with the trunk. So you have 5.3 cubic feet of space for stuff, or about the same as in the fabric-top version of the Miata.

Top up, obviously, the Miata is not as much fun because it brings a booming resonance in the cockpit of the engine at certain revolutions. Overall, it feels less like a sports car, though the handling and performance characteristics remain the same.

On the other hand, you can laugh at the weather, crank up the audio system and, in the tested Grand Touring model, set the automatic climate control for pure comfort.

All is not perfect, however. It never is. The rear speakers are between the bucket seats so there's no way to get a real stereo effect. The shifter is stiff and the clutch is a bit grabby. The sun visors don't swing to the side and the steering wheel tilts but does not telescope.

But the guy in the '48 MG TC would be envious.