The spoiler
 The overwhelming change when you first see the car is the spoiler. It's much much more 'in your face' than any of the previous styles. The 93 model has a relatively discreet spoiler in three parts - a long section attached to either edge of the boot lid, and a continuing side piece fixed to the body at either side (see pic below). In contrast the 98 model (below) has a meaner looking wing slightly curved in cross section. The whole thing is attached to the boot lid, but the supporting end pieces jut out sideways as well as upwards to lengthen the wing.

    rear view of 98 spec MR2 from Toyota brochure

rear view of my old 93 model 

    rear view of Nissan Skyline GT-R

The look of the spoiler is so similar to the Nissan Skyline GT-R (above), that it's hard to believe they are not the same spoiler. At either end of the spoiler are two hexagonal allen key bolts which allow the rake of the wing to be adjusted by about 6 degrees or so.

Unlike the old spoilers the aerofoil has a constant cross sectional shape along its length and so is more susceptible to bending. This means that on anything but the smoothest of road, you can see the wing flexing or vibrating in the rear view mirror, an I also feel less able to close the lid of the boot by holding onto the wing as I did with the old model. That is minor detail though, and I personally love the look of the new spoiler, but it's obviously not to everyone's tastes. The car certainly seems to attract more attention than the old model and I put that down to the spoiler for a large part.

The lights
The lights are very different as well, helping to give the reaer end of the car a much newer and more exciting look. As you can see from the pictures above the lights have become rounder and the light block as a whole less square looking. the reversing lights have moved out of the light block and are now closer together and flush fitting with the fascia which has replaced the black inset which used to surround the MR2 badge in the middle of the black. The result is a cleaner rounder more modern look
A third brake light is now fitted at the very top of the rear window. You can't see the mounting for this light from inside the car, and when the light is on then you cannot see the light inside the car apart from a reflection off of the front of spoiler.
At the front of the car, the indicators are now white when off instead of the old orange colour (see below)

white indicator lights on 98 model (left) compared to 93 model (right)

The Wheels
The alloys have changes as well, moving away from the flatter thick spoked old alloys to a thinner jutting out spoked wheel, with a chromed central cap. Again this makes for a more modern look and is a great improvement in my books.

  shinier new thinner spokes on 98 model (left) compared to 93 (right)

Inside the car
Very little has changed inside the car. There's red stitching on the gear stick and the steering wheel. And the dials on the dash have red markings around the outside. There's a driver's airbag now, which takes up most of the centre of the wheel. Annoying there is now only one way to fit my steering wheel lock on the wheel so I need to make sure I have the wheel in the right orientation before I take the key out of the ignition. Previously the lock fitted in various angles. The diameter of the ring of the wheel also seems slightly smaller to hold - and my steering wheel lock clips over the outer ring with slightly less of a tight squeeze.
  Gearknob from 1998 MR2 showing red stitching
Dials with red markings from 1998 MR2 
Switches and buttons are all exactly the same from what I remember apart from the fog light switches which are on/off push buttons instead of the old rocker switches. Personally I think the new buttons are better.

The stereo system
A big change as far as I'm concerned is that the new model has a 6 speaker system instead of the old 8 speaker system - the two sub woofers have been lost from behind the seats, but the boxes remain. The box behind the drivers seat has an opening lid and a 6 inch deep storage tray inside. The box behind the passanger's seat does not open, despite the fact that it is empty. If you do pull the lid off, there isn't even a tray underneat - it's straight through to bodywork and the like!
  Factory fitted stereo from 1998 MR2
The factory fitted stereo is a decent system - RDS EON CD changer ready 4x40w, although the little removeable section of the front panel is, in my opinion crap! It feels too delicate for one thing, and for another I'd rather see the whole front of the stereo missing instead of a tiny section.

As for the sound of the new system, then it's hard for me to tell- I can't remember what the old Toyota system sounded like when I got the 93 model, so it's hard to compare that to tht e system in the 98 model although one report says the new system sounds better despite the  reduction in speakers. I wasn't drastically  impressed with the old system in the 93 model. I had the old car rewired to take a Kenwood System with a 10 disc changer bolted to the bodywork in front of the spare tyre under the front bonnet.This sounded pretty good and was an improvement over the Toyota system I originally had. Then when I got the new car, the fitted system sounded terrible compared to my old car. I wanted to get a new system anyway so I'd left the old Kenwood system in the car when I traded it in.

In the new car I got a Pioneer KEH-P7600R system fitted straight into the existing Toyota stereo harness which means that when (if) I come to sell then the old headset can slot straight back into it's old harness. A 12 disc changer was fitted vertically into the box behind the drivers seat, with a hole cut in te lid to fit precisely over the changer. The lid still opens and closes nicely over the face of the changer which pokes through the lid by about a centimetre or so and looks very neat indeed. The roof glass rests neatly on the spare 2 or three inches spare gap between the CD changer and the rear wall of the cockpit.

To get back to the 8 speaker set up, a 140W amp is fitted into the bottom of the box behind the passanger, and this feeds two 6 inch sub woofers which are fitted neatly into the lid of the same box. On this side, the roof glass doesn't have so much room to rest on, so it touches the edges of the speakers. I may have to put a narrow protective strip along the rear edge of the lid and just cover up the rear edges of the speaker mounting in order to protet the roof glass when it's off.

This setup sounds absolutely excellent, and the 7600R is a joy to use although my only complaint is that the display is not very visible on bright days. Otherwise (especially at night) the display is coolness itself, and the face which slowly flips down to uncover the cassette mechanism never fails to delight the passanger. For more info on the 7600R, check out http://www.pioneer-eur.com/products/car/keh25en.htm.

Other Changes
The airbag has been mentioned already briefly. There is no passanger airbag.
The exterior mirrors are now electrically heated, great for cold starts (I expect!).
There is a factory fitted alarm and immobiliser with electronic chips built into the keys. Three keys came with the car - two can be copied by Toyota dealers. The other service key or valet key cannot be copied. At least the key itself can be copied but the chip inside the key cannot be copied, so the immobiliser won't be turned off.The alarm flashes the cars indicators twice on open ans once on close and does not make loud annoying bleeps, although a quiet little blip would be nice...
All round ABS is new over the 93 model, but not I think the 94 model.
Horsepower is up on the 93 model to 168 BHP, but his is down 5 BHP on the 94 model.More about performance below.
Catalytic converters are new over the 93 model.
The windscreen wiper switch is more annoyingly clicky. Barely audible in the old car, it is now quite audible if no music is playing
Choice of color is now more limited, in fact at the time I ordered my car, two colors had been cancelled (Goodwood Green and Azure Blue) this leaves only red, white, black, cosmos blue (my choice) and I think also the silver is still available. I was also told that availability was becoming less since production of the MR2 was already slowing. May or may not be true!

Performance and Handling
After I' done nearly 1000 miles the engine felt a bit tight, and besides I wanted to be easy on the car for the first few hundred miles. Certainly it sounded smoother and quieter than my old 93 model. The car seemed lighter to steer (could be because of new tyres all round) and therefore more prone to oversteer. The feel of the road seemed lacking.  Five hundred miles later and I was putting all that down to it being a new car because I love this car to bits. The road holding is superb - far better than my old model. I've not tryed pushing the car in the wet, and nor do I intend to - I'd like to keep the car roughly the same shape for now thank you! Suspension seems firmer with respect to the roll motion round corners but not to the detriment of driving comfort - that, if anything, is better.

Acceleration is a small niggling point. The car seems to be even less able to accelerate well at lower revs than the 93 model, despite having greater horsepower. Part of this can be explained by the addition of catalytic converters over the 93 model. The lack of these on the old car actually made the 93 model (and 92 presumably) the fastest of all the models. At low revs revs it's annoyingly slow to accelerate in the higher gears, although it has improved since zero mileage so I'm open to the fact that this may continue to improve a little. Around 4500/5000 revs, the engine sings and all the power is there that you need, so unfortunately it's still a question of being in the right gear at the right time. Best off getting a turbo if you want to get round this problem it seems.

Economy seems little changed over my 65,000 mile 93 model - still around 31 mpg and doesn't seem to vary much what ever sort of driving I'm doing. Keep watch on my fuel economy log to see how economy changes with the age of the car.

All in all - I'm extremely pleased with the new car, and it's a massive improvement over the 93 model.
Well the car is now (20 Nov 98) very nearly due for its first service at 9,000 miles. I have to say that the car has got better and better since I bought it. It's no longer tight - it's quick and responsive and gives a great deal of feedback to the driver - much much better than the 93 model. Steering is direct and the car goes exactly where I want it to. Acceleration feels excellent, although I've not done any timings. Cornering is particularly impressive. Braking is superb. On my winding route to work I can lose everything except an M3! This car is a joy!
Any problems in the first 9000 miles? Well, there was a couple of vibrating noises which seem to have gone, but that is it.

Fitting air conditioning
Fitting air conditioning on the 98 spec model is now easier than for the earlier models. It's still a dealer fit option but with labour reduced from 10 or 11 hours down to around 5 hours. With the new kit for the 98 model then this means that dealers are now charging around 2000 pounds to fit air conditioning. However, I found from one dealer that they would charge 1697 pounds all in. When the dealer where I was buying the car made enquiries they told me that the new kit was similar to the old kit except for one piece which could be bought from the parts department for 25 pounds, and that this meant they could charge me 1680 pounds to get the air con fitted. Now what this is all about, I'm not sure, but it seems to me that if you can tell your dealer X that dealer Y can do it for N pounds, then dealer X should ring dealer Y to find out why and then charge you N-20 pounds. This saved me 300 pounds on air con - let's see that might just cover a set of rear tyres in nine months time...
Alternatively, shop around! A Toyota dealer in more remote parts of the country can charge less - eg somewhere on the west coast of Wales quoted me around 1800 pounds to fit air con in my old car a year ago whereas my local dealer was asking for around 2500. I never got it done at that time, but I went all out with the new car!

Other Options (Japan only?)
One thing that I think looks ugly is the fascia panel over the spare stereo hole. It is possible to get a couple of items to replace this. One is a stereo sized plastic surround which gives a little extra space which you can use for small items, eg cigarettes etc if you smoke. The other option is a dual slide out cup holder which I don't personally like. In Japan you can get fog lights which swivel left and right depending on which way you turn the steering wheel. Only in Japan!!! And what I wish was standard on the UK model is the electrically retractable wing mirrors via a switch on the driver's switch panel on the door. If this was an option in the UK then I would have had it, but the options supplied to the UK market seem few and far between.
Also available in Japan is the MR2 spider! Around 3-500 fully convertible MR2's were made. I don't know anything about them except that the finish quality is apparantly not what it could be, although the UK import price makes the car a cheap option at around ten thousand pounds or so.

Feel free to contact me with questions, answers to questions or for any MR2 related information exchange!

Also - be sure to check out Simon Judges MR2 web page where there's more 98 spec MR2 info and pictures