From ragtops to riches.

• Position: Jeff Gram of MM Marketing Inc. - People

Jeff Gram remembers seeing a little red roadster zip past him on Interstate 95 two years ago. He didn't know what it was, but he knew he had to have one. "A few days later, a friend explained life to me," Gram says. "He told me it was a Mazda Miata."

Soon afer the Japanese convertible was introduced in 1989, there was a six-month waiting list for the privilege of paying up to $5,000 more than the $14,000 list price to own one. But Gram, 29, had a Miata in his driveway in three days: "I called every Mazda dealer in the cornfields until I found one."

His fascination with the car didn't end with ownership. Gram, a 1984 UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, is a representative for jewelry maker Jostens Inc.'s school-yearbook-publishing division. He started a mail-order business selling Miata accessories in his hometown, Hope Mills, near Fayetteville. MM Marketing Inc., less than a year old, has rached up more than $ 300,000 in sales.

Gram is cashing in on a devoted following. Miata zeolots formed a car club before the first model rolled off the assembly line, and the club publishes a quarterly magazine.

But soon after buying his bright-red Miama, Gram found a slight glitch. "If you put anything loose inside the trunk that can slide around, like golf clubs or a screwdriver, it will ding the left side of the quarter panel," he says...