This is your sign to never throw away anything. Ever.

What’s bound to happen if you let something go? That’s right, you’ll eventually need it.

That just happened to us, in fact, with our Garage Rescue Miata.

Let's back up a few decades.

A long, long time ago–specifically in 1994 and 1995–we ran a then-new Mazda Miata R as a magazine project car. We even took it to the SCCA Solo Nats, where our own J.G. Pasterjak trophied in it. Our car even had the factory stripes.

At the back of that Miata, we fit a trailer hitch receiver so we could haul tires to the event. This was long before today’s 200tw tires, so if you wanted to run anywhere near the pointy end of the field, you swapped to R-comps once on site.

With a car as small as the Miata, that meant using a tire trailer. You still see some tire trailers at events, but back in the day, all the cool kids arrived with one in tow.

Before that Miata went back to Mazda, we decommissioned it–which, as we remember, largely involved removing the trailer hitch.

It then sat behind J.G.’s garage.

A few years later–we’re talking very late ’90s–we wanted to carry some bikes with our Garage Rescue Miata. (This was long before the car was sent to the corner of the garage.) So we rescued that hitch and paired it with the appropriate bike rack.

We might have repainted the hitch, too, before fitting it, but don’t quote us. It was a few years ago.

That hitch sat attached to the back of this Miata for years–decades, even–until we pulled the car from the garage two years ago.

Shedding a few pounds from the tail end of the Miata would make us faster through the cones, right? So we unbolted the hitch during the summer of 2021.

Recently, we had an idea: Why not return the Miata to its 1990s trim for a Radwood showing? We still have both the rack and the BMX bike that it once transported. Plus, we now have our original white Kosei K1 wheels.

[How we’re prepping our Miata for Radwood]

The plan was coming together, right?

But where was that trailer hitch?

Well, we separated the two in J.G.’s shop. There was talk about it going to a forum member and then something, something, something.

Did J.G. still have the hitch?

Maybe? Or is this one for a Mustang?

Okay, let’s see if the holes line up.

Found hiding in plain sight in his shop: that same old Miata hitch. Soon it will celebrate 30 years of service in the GRM crew–along with the honor of being abandoned twice.

Thrown something away and regretted it?

Found something in the corner of the garage that totally saved the day?

Let’s hear it.

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