d motorofficial f motor_mag^107into the product plan was difficult.
They set up a group called the Technical Research Division,
and it was designed to look at things that were out there;
technologies, studies of human factors, not necessarily
to design a specific product, but to study tech solutions,
powertrains, and other things that might apply to one or many
of the things in the product pipeline. Concurrently the studios
in Japan had an idea to come up with a sports car, and we in
California had our little sports roadster.
Several ideas got knocked around. A mid-engine car; a
front-engine, front-wheel drive car; and our car, which was
always front-engine, rear-wheel drive and never deviated
from that. Then someone had the idea to have a competition
among these ideas, and that’s when our project became a bit
more real and legit; we had no certainty that our car would
ultimately make it into the model mix. But at least we could
formally present it to top management as a possibly official
product development program.
Three full-sized clay models were built; we had some
challenges with our car because we didn’t have any official
engineering support to help with hard points and so forth.
Our car ended up being modelled around an RX-7 rear axle.
That gave us one dimension – track width – and knowing
the various relationships needed for a sports car, we couldextrapolate from that and come up with a wheelbase, then
other dimensions, so we had some numbers and dimensions
to fool with.
Mark Jordan, who was hired in late 1982 and another
designer, did this “Gen zero” car, which actually looked a fair
amount like what became the first-gen MX-5. Except, since its
dimensions were extrapolated around a too-wide rear axle, it
was way too big for what we envisioned. The original idea for
the car was that it would be done primarily out of the parts bin
with hand-me-down items; obviously the less stuff that had
to be scratch-designed and developed just for the sports car
program, the cheaper it would be to produce the car, and we
thought an easier business case to sell.
There was a time during the “competition” between the
two Japanese studios and us in California after initial sketch
presentations, that we would build clay models. Then there
would be a cut down to two and then finally to one, which
would get built.
Mark came back from presentations and we were going
to build a clay model for management review, but there
were some inside political machinations going on and it
was possible they weren’t even going to consider our car. We
made our model of clay up to the belt line with a see-through
fibreglass removable roof that could be taken off to show whatTOP RIGHT
Iconic pop-up
headlights only lasted
one generation before
being cut for the NBABOVE RIGHT
The MX-5’s philosophy
has always been about
light weight and keen
dynamics – not power
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