I swear that I heard nothing good about Optimas and miatas for the longest time, then Z-jay (??) mentioned that he has heard the exact opposite. That goes hand in hand with what you're saying - I knew of nothing negative about them until I saw all the miata posts against them. Naturally, when I went to make sure I wasn't batshit crazy, I couldn't find anything to help my side. Such is life (read: good luck finding lots of negative posts about them)