This year has been sluggish for small sports cars. For the last few months, sales of the definitive examples of the segment, the Miata and the twins that are the GR86 and BRZ, have lagged behind last year. April showed signs of change, though, as the Miata performed fairly well.Now the May results are in, and Mazda's roadster built on its momentum to finally outdo 2025 numbers. The Toyobaru twins haven't been as fortunate. Let's take a closer look at the numbers. The Miata Has A Mighty May Ian Wright/CarBuzz/ValnetWith 1,053 sales in May, the Miata barely came up short of its also impressive April sales. However, Miata sales in May last year were awful at 355. So by percentage, Miata sales month-over-month were up by 196.6%. This second strong month also meant that total Miata sales for 2026 have finally topped 2025. It's up 10.9% year-over-year, going from 3,528 units to 3,911.It also happened to be one of the few Mazdas to have improved sales over last year, the others being the Mazda3 and the CX-50. Meanwhile, the rest of the line-up and the Mazda's total sales numbers are down by 6.9% for the year. The Twins Have It Tough ToyotaAs for the GR86 and BRZ, they both had a rough month, just like the last few. The Subaru performed the worst with just 255 of the coupes finding homes in May. That was a decline of 21.8% over May 2025. That also brought the total for the year up to 1,341 units, a less depressing 8.1% decline over 2025's total through May, but still quite low.In fact, the pricey Honda Prelude managed to sell more than 300 units in May, bringing its total to 1,470. Whether it's worse that an affordable rear-drive car is underperforming an expensive front-drive hybrid, or that the hybrid is barely beating a car that was redesigned nearly half a decade ago.The Toyota's 711 sales look great by comparison, but were still down by 16.5% month-over-month. At 3,258 sales for the year, the Toyota also still tops the Subaru, but the decline over last year is a much bigger 29.6%. If nothing else, combined sales of the twins are still greater than the Miata. That's likely not much comfort to the respective companies' accountants, though. Plus, if the Miata keeps pulling in buyers, the convertible might soon come out ahead. CarBuzz Insight – Why This Matters: The Miata is proving to be a fairly timeless as a vehicle, and we're not just talking about the appeal of a light, playful convertible. The sales bear this out. The last time the Miata was substantially updated was for the 2019 model year when Mazda increased both the horsepower and the redline of its 2.0-liter four-cylinder. Beyond that, the basic car dates back to the generational redesign for the 2016 model year. Since 2019, the worst Miata sales were a bit over 6,000 in 2022, and that was after a particularly good 2021 in which sales topped 10,000. Meanwhile, the last three years have all stayed above 8,000 units.