The car is not lowered drastically. I don't know what the stock ride height of a 10 year old Miata is but if mine's more than an inch or two lower, I'd be surprised. It's not like it has parts hitting the ground on speed bumps or other bits of road where other cars do just fine.
My biggest problem in this issue is getting a straight answer from anyone. The garage said it's bad because it has lowering springs (they said this while the car was up on a rack with wheels removed, so they couldn't gauge ride height - just a visual inspection of the springs on the car). The people on the phone at the MVA say suspension mods are OK if no part of the car's body fall below the bottom of the wheel, and under this spec my car passes. So they give me the name and number of the state trooper whose responsibility includes the shop that flunked my car.
Officer calls back and says aftermarket suspension is no good... when pressed further he said there is a height rule, that the midpoint of the headlight has to be 24" off the ground. On my car it's about 30". The officer was going to swing by the house to look at the car but I guess he got tied up in more pressing stuff cause he hasn't been by today.
My beef isn't with a simple pass/fail thing anymore. It's that nobody seems to know exactly what can pass and why, and what will fail and why. I don't know yet who has final authority, the MVA people I spoke with on the phone or the cop, or the mechanics at Mr Tire, and none of the specs that would help me (or anyone else) figure this out ahead of time are available online.
Either way, I doubt a car that's been lowered two inches (if that) presents a danger to its driver or anyone else, and I think everyone can agree that a car with springs and shocks that have been replaced with better-than-stock equivalents has to be safer for everyone than something with 132,000-mile-old suspension.
