d motorofficial f motor_mag^109the car looked like topless. What they thought looked only
pretty good in sketch form now looked really good in full scale
model form. Ours was the last of the three concepts shown to
management. The cut lines where the top met the body were
concealed with tape, and after all the presentations were done
we removed the tape and pulled the top off, and Sato stood up
and said “build that one!”
It is interesting that one of the Japan studio’s concepts was
for a mid-engine car, and shortly after the whole management
review process was over, everyone attended the Tokyo auto
show where Toyota revealed the mid-engine MR2. Everyone
at Mazda couldn’t help but think how lucky it was that we
had decided to go with a front-engine, rear-drive sports car
instead of a mid-engine design. The overhangs and some
proportions of our mid-engine proposal were different, but
the overall concept would have been much the same.
As our car was scheduled to come out a few years later (late
1989 vs 1985 for the MR2) it would have looked like we copied
them. This was all great for me, as my idea now had front-row
visibility with Mazda’s board of management.
Luckily there was a bit of a race to see which of three
internal development projects would come in line first. The
roadster, an MPV mini-van, or a tiny little 550cc mid-rear
engine domestic market city car that was designed, and also a
brilliant example of vehicle packaging. This car never made it
to market, and thank goodness the MPV got the nod ahead of
our sports car, which delayed us a bit.
Ultimately this helped as an airbag was developed for
the MPV, which we then had time to package into the MX-5
instead of motormouse belts or some of the other passive
restraint concepts circulating at the time. It costs a lot of
money, and takes an enormous amount of time to engineer
airbags into a car that wasn’t originally designed to have
them; so thank goodness our project came a half step behind
the MPV, so our car could be engineered from the ground up
with airbag systems in mind. One car that got caught up in
this mess was the Australian-built Mercury Capri. It wasn’t an
identical competitor to our car, but it would have come out
before us if not for the snafu on passive restraints. By the time
the Capri was re-engineered for airbags, it came out after us.
The launch of the car was dubbed “Miatamania,” since
the production car was revealed in the States at the Chicago
Auto show in the spring of 1989, and there were some in the
company who wanted to hold the sale date for July 4. Even
though ours wasn’t an American car, the first hues you could
get were red, white and blue. Luckily the marketing director,
Duane, said “no, put ’em out there as soon as the dealers get
them.” So we didn’t have to deal with excuses of scandal by
trying to over manage the supply and demand. Demand was
far more than many in the company hoped for. Dealers were
getting $5K-$6K over sticker for them at the very beginning.
I get a lot of questions about what the car was and wasn’t.
Did we leave anything on the table? No, not really, it was the
car we all wanted, and it proved right in the market.
Did we ever intend to build it with anything other than
an inline-four for power? No. Like the Nissan 1600 and 2000
roadster, the Lotus, the MGB, and so many other of the British
roadsters, they all were most right and most successful as a
sports car with a four-cylinder engine. Did we plan to race
it? Not specifically, we always felt that was best left to the
customers and racing teams. We did, however, discuss that
you only really get great racecars from great sports cars, but
we didn’t set out to build a racecar.
I fought really tough and dirty to make sure that the
convertible top was super light and simple. That’s why it’s not
buried beneath a hard tonneau cover. I wanted it to be easy to
unlatch at a stop light when you wanted to go topless, all you
had to do was “throw it over your shoulder” to put it down. It
also had to be just as easy to fold up at a stoplight if it began
to rain. You didn’t have to get out of the car, you didn’t have to
mess with a folding hard cover, and you just grabbed it and
pulled it up and latched it down. Simple, easy and light.
What about the ND? I like it. I like the styling, the quality
built into it, and the idea of keeping the weight down as much
as possible; building in the lightness, in other words.
Working on the MX-5 has, in a way, become an albatross
around my neck which, for better and worse, continues to
impact my career today. When I joined Geely, we had to
stipulate that I would not develop, in any way, a front engine,
rear drive roadster sports car for them – no matter how badly
they wanted it or wanted me to do it.
I still have some ideas left in my head, and even though the
industry has matured, I believe the car business will change
more in the next 50 years than it did in its first hundred, so
there’s lots of change and innovation, and new products and
product types yet to come.
But with MX-5 did we imagine a more than [30] year model
run with more than a million built to date? It really wouldn’t
have been smart to think that way, but we did believe with
some solid updating along the way, and a successful second
generation car, we didn’t see any reason it couldn’t live 10
years in the marketplace. Which it has now done so – three
times in a row.ABOVE
The NA is a refreshing
example of back-to-
basics driving, the
uncluttered wheel
being a centrepieceMAIN LEFT
Sun out, roof down
and a twisty road - the
perfect example of
what the MX-5 was
designed for➜