May 28^th, 2004

2006 Miata/ MX-5 to turn heads, if not rotors

Will do without a Wankel, but expect a major minimalist rethink benefiting from not only Mazda's traditional enlightenment, but also its Japanese roots

The 1989 Miata, internally dubbed P729, reinforced Colin Chapman's old edict that weight was the enemy of not only fuel economy but, also, of performance. Mk1 Miata lasted for an incredible eight years. Mk1 still looks fresh, and makes a mockery out of some of the more blatantly retro vehicles that hit the road near the Millennium. This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the way to do it: inspired, rather than insipidly and slavishly copied. Although refined by Mazda's Shunji Tanaka, Mk1 was an American proposal from Mazda NA (MANA), who were also instrumental in lobbying for its rear-wheel-drive, front-engined layout over a front-wheel-drive or mid-engined variant

Recently hired as CEO of Maserati, and formerly of Ford of Europe, Martin Leach was at Mazda in the spring of 1994, when he instigated the development of the '98 Mk2. Mk1 Chief engineer Takao Kijima took the position of Toshihiko Hirai as Mk2 Miata program manager. Retaining the original Miata's ideology of light and balanced weight, the pop-up headlamps were ditched for being too heavy. This created a stir among North American Miata enthusiasts, in particular, but once again it was in fact an American proposal - by ex-Chrysler man Ken Saward at Mazda's Irvine studio - that was accepted over the Japanese design

'01 Mk2.5, the current Miata, was a Japanese refreshing designed to bring the car into line with Mazda's new five-point grille family 'face.'

Translated, Ibuki means "breathing new life into." Miata itself is an old German word which means reward, or deserved praise, writes James Taylor in Mazda MX-5 and Miata: 1989-1999 (Motor Racing Publications Ltd., 1999). Shown at Tokyo 2003, Moray Callum's Mazda Ibuki Concept previews the next-generation, 2006 Miata/ MX-5. Unlike its two-and-a-half predecessors, it will most likely strive for a truly Japanese look

As Mazda grows more confident, and inspired to chase its Japanese roots, we're betting on Callum's Ibuki Concept to prevail over a more evolutionary approach (as exhibited above in an undated Road & Track rendition)

Width and wheelbase of the Ibuki are longer than the current Miata's, but - thanks to dramatically short overhangs - is actually smaller overall

Basic shape of the tail-lamps are unmistakably Miata, but here functionality is emphasized over form

Adhering to Bob Hall's self-dubbed KISS (Keep it Simple... etc.) strategy with the original Miata, the Ibuki Concept is indeed a minimalist creation. Unlike the original, however, it seems more comfortable in reveling in its minimalism - as evidenced by the deliberate console which recalls the cost-cut interior or the Mk1 Miata...

...  yet turns it into a style which flows across the  top of the car

Ibuki heralds a return to the minimalism that brought enthusiasts banging on Mazda's doors when the Miata first appeared in 1989. Miata's forte was playing to the more from less ideology that inspired the Sport Compact movement. Callum's car is one which has matured without growing old, in that it treats the Miata as a true icon in its own right rather than simply - as in 1989 - a reference to the glorious past of others

Mazda is well on its way to recovery now, and is willing and able to translate into steel Moray Callum's ideas for exploring its Japanese heritage. Although the RX-8, and the Ibuki Concept's use of a hybrid engine and RX-8-sourced double-wishbone front and rear suspension, might have led us to expect more a imaginative powertrain, the next Miata will be a visual blueprint for mainstream Mazda-ness through the next decade. Wipe a tear from the eye, then, and look at it with the same clarity which it projects. Many a brand would give up its entire marketing department to be able to justifiably pull off the individual, intelligent simplicity of the Ibuki Concept

Well, we are a little disappointed. Even after the exquisite Mazda RX-8 (see article: 'More power to Mazda'), whose return of the rotary to our shores helped make it our Sports Car of the Year, 2003, the next Miata/ MX-5 will not be using its powerplant.

Refreshing an automotive icon demands an iconic, respectful approach, and Mazda's RX-8 had signaled a revival of one of the greatest examples of true DNA ever seen in this industry.

Mazda and the rotary are, by now, virtually inextricable.

On the other hand, Mazda's little Ibuki Concept, the star of Tokyo 2003 and a fair guide to what the next Miata will look like, is such a superb stylistic effort that we are willing to put its lack of a rotary down to a misguided oversight.

Fourteen years after the first guide to the Miata - the MX-04 Concept - was unveiled in Tokyo, we're talking about new Miatas again. And why not? Over 700,000 copies have been sold worldwide. In 2001, it overtook the 1962-1980 MGB as the most popular roadster ever built. For its manufacturer, this car is alone in Mazda's current range in having, unperturbed, carried the Mazda flag through some very difficult years.

The Miata reinforced Lotus founder Colin Chapman's old edict that weight was the enemy of not only fuel economy but, also, of performance. During Mazda's darkest days, the little roadster kept alive the flame of the company's reputation for sporting machinery.

Mind you, it has been a rough and relatively short road. So bright - and seemingly out of place - was the Miata's star at times that Mazda wound up complaining that it was not getting sufficient credit for the product and began adding Mazda to its cars' names (starting with the Mazda6).

So as Mazda feverishly works on a car whose cues will set its DNA for years to come, we ponder a few points they are no doubt contemplating at Toyo Kogyo in Hiroshima, and at Mazda North America (MANA) of Irvine, California:

• Mazda's 'halo:' sport;
   

• Mazda's 'halo:' the rotary; (link)
   

• Miata's promise: pragmatic performance, (link)
   

• and how Moray Callum's Ibuki Concept fits-in (link)

With Mazda's own attempt at luxury, Amati, being a failed memory (and with its flagship Millenia cancelled - see article: 'Millenia bows out of the Millennium'), sport is Mazda's 'halo.'

• Sport, then, is Mazda's enthusiastic answer to the similarly involved glow that Lexus' luxury and Infiniti's renewed irreverence cast over Toyota and Nissan respectively.
   

• Sport is how the Mazda brand extends itself to show what it can do.
   

• Sport is the ideology used to extend Mazda's individual models as their base prices increase across their individual ranges.

Interestingly, it has not ever been thus. "Mazda's involvement with the manufacture of sporting machinery," notes author James Taylor, "dates back no further than the 1960s, and indeed its real credibility in the sports car world dates back only to the late 1970s" (Mazda MX-5 and Miata: 1989-1999, Motor Racing Publications Ltd., 1999).

Rarely has an icon been created in the short period in which the Miata has been with us (since 1989), and by a company which has been making cars since just 1960. Indeed, the most amazing part of the Miata story is its rapid flourishing as a true icon of the industry, a worthy (if not directly related) descendant of the philosophies of giants such as the Triumph GT6 and TR6, the Lotus Elan, the Alfa Romeo Duetto, and various Austin-Healeys and MGs.

If Miata's looks paid tribute to the Lotus Elan, that was certainly no accident. Even more incredibly, the Miata inspired a series of competitors who appeared to have suddenly rediscovered the segment.

Yet when it first appeared, it was in its own league.

Sport implies a touch of rebellion that is perhaps more inherent to Western culture. "A lot of people said they wanted freedom (out of a convertible)," author Liz Turner quotes Shinzo 'Steve' Kubo, right-hand-man to Miata project chief Toshihiko Hirai, as noting.

"In Japan, the word always has a political meaning. So we were wondering how exactly this car would improve human rights.

"Eventually I understood. It means freedom from daily life, duty, schedules, freedom at the weekend after a week at work" (You & Your Mazda MX-5/ Miata, Haynes, 2002).

The Americans involved in the Miata project were happy to lend a hand to an already enlightened company. Bob Hall, a journalist and often referred to as the biological father of the Miata, was brought into Mazda without formal qualifications but with a strong sense of what did and did not work in the industry.

A little, perhaps, like that better-known Bob who has deservedly come to be revered.

"I thought I'd be in PR," Hall tells Turner, "but no, when I arrived I found myself in product development" (You & Your Mazda MX-5/ Miata, Haynes, 2002).

Determined to keep cost and weight down, Mazda reserved the bulk of Mk1 Miata development work for the basic structure. Mazda understood the same principle that has made BMW such a dynamic force: an independent wishbone suspension only works if the structure to which it is attached is a stiff one.

Yet the Miata's stiffness was achieved inherently, without adding excessive weight. Even the battery was lightweight and, as with BMW, mounted in the trunk in pursuit of 50/50 weight distribution. Similarly, the engine was placed as far back as possible.

The Miata/ MX-5 solidified the connection between Mazda and enthusiasm, even if - at the time - Mazda's other vehicles tended to be relatively dull. In 1990, the restyled 323 lost its turbocharger; in 1992, we quietly lost the little MX-3, without replacement, and by 1996, the RX-7 - as associated with waiting lists and feverish offers over of thousands over MSRP as the Miata had been - was gone.

So pert and telegraphic was the Miata that no one really thought of it as part of the brand's then-rather-mundane fold (RX-7 excepted). Mazda tried to rectify that in 2001 with its Zoom, Zoom campaign, claiming that its entire range had "the soul of a sports car." Yet the Miata's payoff has taken longer still.. As the company has picked itself up, its '03 Mazda6, last-generation Protégé (particularly in Mazdaspeed clothes), and current Mazda3 all exhibit a certain joie de vivre that has often been lacking in Japanese cars.

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How reasonable might it have been for ourselves - and for several enthusiasts we have talked to - to expect a rotary in the upcoming third-generation Miata? To answer this question, we submit that going back to the very beginnings of Mazda is in order.

Mazda has been building cars for barely forty-four years, under a name derived both from its founder, Jujiro Matsuda, and from the Zoroastrian god of light, Ahura Mazda. Although the company actually dates back to 1920, when it made corks, then tools, and finally three-wheeled trucks, World War II prevented its 1940 prototype sedan from seeing the light of day, and necessity dictated that truck production continued in postwar Japan. In 1960, the R-360 two-seater finally emerged as Mazda's first production car. The rotary connection that would ensue a year later seemed more than natural for a company which had been building cars whose rear-engined, air-cooled layouts resembled period NSUs.

NSU was the unequivocal rotary pioneer of the time, and licensed its technology to Mazda for use. Despite a brief flirtation with water-cooled, piston-engined vehicles, including the Bertone-designed 1500 Luce, Mazda in its early days is perhaps best remembered for the rotary 1967 Cosmo 110S. 1,176 examples were built through 1972. By the time NSU was usurped by Volkswagen, thanks to teething problems with the otherwise brilliant Ro80 sedan, Mazda had been emboldened to produce what would become the only newly-developed, rotary-engined vehicles of its time.

There was a period in the '70s when Mazda threw the rotary into everything it gave us here in the U.S. R100, RX-2, RX-3, and RX-4 all date back to this point in time. More than half of the Mazdas sold in the U.S. in 1971 had rotary engines. Motor Trend called these "the biggest innovation in power plants since the turbine," and the Wall Street Journal noted that "the Wankel has 40% fewer parts and weighs one third to one half less than today's engines."

After the 1973 gas crisis, however, Mazda slowly began shying away from the rotary and its conspicuous consumption. In 1976, its newest four-cylinder piston-engined car was even named the Mazda Mizer to emphasize this shift in strategy.

Finally, in 1978, the RX-7 (Savanna, in Japan) heralded a new era when the rotary powerplant would be used only for 'halo' Mazda models. In 1979, Ford confirmed, buying 25% of Mazda out of a strategic desire to, eventually, completely own a Japanese company and without much concern for what had been the Japanese manufacturer's raison d'être. Despite an Import Car of the Year award for its 626 from Motor Trend in 1983, the company was unmistakably becoming increasingly mainstream in its designs and technology. Joint efforts such as the Ford Probe/ Mazda MX-6, and Ford Festiva/ Mazda 121 (essentially a Kia Pride) were relatively colorless compared to Mazda's earlier efforts.

When the RX-7 departed our shores after the 1995 model year, Mazda's U.S. lineup was left without the rotary engine that had distinguished its first Stateside efforts. Stories began emerging of RX-7 owners who were turned away by Mazda dealerships who were desperate to get away from the complexity of servicing the rotary.

Its Amati luxury division efforts having failed, the company soldiered on with increasingly less to differentiate itself. May 1996 saw Ford seize the moment, taking a 33.4% controlling stake in the company for the bargain price of $500 million. "In March 1997," writes James Taylor, "the two manufacturers agreed on a synchronized product cycle which would see the progressive commonization of platforms and powertrains" (Mazda MX-5 and Miata, Motor Racing Publications, Ltd., 1999).

During these darker years, only the Miata lent Mazda's rather humdrum range any distinctiveness. The Miller-cycle engine in the flagship Millenia never quite encouraged buyers to take the plunge, and memories of rotors clouded Mazda's attempts at recovery like an albatross.

In 2003, three important things happened. First, the Mazda6 demonstrated that the company could yet again emphasize performance. Secondly, Mazdaspeed lent a hand to the little Protégé, giving the chassis the power it had cried out for and the halo that the Mazda range so desperately needed.

Perhaps most critically, however, the rotary made a comeback. The superlative RX-8 rekindled what Automobile, April 2003, described as "incredibly powerful imagery (which) defines Mazda in a world where brand identity is hard to come by."

Mazda and the rotary are inextricable; more importantly, Mazda's success of the type that the Miata has achieved has generally been dependent on the company's unique desire to improve upon the workings of Felix Wankel.

If we expected a revitalized Mazda to find the wherewithal to return to the technology that made it famous, this was hardly irrational. However, this ignores the Miata's core value of pragmatism, which leads us to the next section.

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Starting at £3,000 less than the contemporary Lotus Elan, and delivering a more precise driving experience, the Miata was a revelation. Here was a simple, four-cylinder car driving its rear wheels through a manual transmission and sitting almost flat on its old-fashioned all-around wishbone suspension - and yet there was nothing like it on the market.

The recipe was pure magic, and music to the ears of enthusiasts who felt abandoned (particularly in the U.S, where several European manufacturers had, by the late '80s, departed and taken their X1/9s and Spyders with them). "If this cute, simple, and brilliant roadster had not proved that there is a demand for a small, affordable sports car - and that there is a profit to be made from making one - there would probably be no MGF, BMW Z3, Fiat Barchetta, or even Audi TT," writes Liz Turner (You & Your Mazda MX-5/ Miata, Haynes, 2002).

Surprisingly, considering the Miata's success, Bob Hall - as much the father of the Miata as Iacocca was of the '64 Stang - tells Turner that, "this was not a well-liked project - there were those in the company who thought it was an utter waste of money. In fact, we had to avoid some people deliberately."

Indeed, a two-person sports car was a little too hedonistic for the Japanese at the time. Mazda's accountants, in particular, were very much against the MANA (Mazda North America) front-engined, rear-wheel-drive proposal. Why could such an obviously niche car not be built as a front-wheel-drive vehicle on an existing platform, they wondered?

Yet there is every evidence that the core Japanese philosophy of pragmatism was ultimately responsible for a large chunk of the Miata's success. Not only were the Miata's components and price tag pragmatically approachable, but so too was its performance itself. Turner describes how Mazda engineers totaled three Porsche 944s while examining on-the-limit handling, determined to build a car whose potential was accessible.

Technically, a minor but surprisingly key factor was project manager Toshihiko Hirai's insistence that a powerplant frame (PPF) ran along the right-hand side of the propshaft, connecting the engine and gearbox to the rear axle in an effort to keep the driver appraised of what was going on. Moreover, this prevented the vertical drivetrain flexibility that causes axle tramp.

The key philosophy in the influential Sport Compact market, as we noted in The Few Remaining Secrets of the Sport Compact Crowd (ISBN #1-4116-0500-4), is more from less. Indeed, Wheels' Mike McCarthy wrote of the Miata in July, 1992,

"(it) is an embodiment of the less-is-more philosophy. Its performance is moderate but honest, its styling simple yet significant, its dynamics understated but excellent."

If the basic interior was the weakest part of the car, well, it certainly lent itself to the personalization Sport Compacters are wont to engage in. Indeed, Tom Matano proposes exactly that theory to Turner.

In summary, the Miata won by delivering a true, rear-wheel-drive sports car for sensible money and in compliance with draconian U.S. safety regulations that had killed-off so many of its ilk, years and decades before Miata's introduction in 1989.

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As wonderful as the original Miata was, it was Japanese primarily in its functional ideology; that the function inspired enthusiasm was just a sad reminder of how low (in relative terms) the rest of Mazda's range - and affordable sports cars in general - had fallen.

Over a year ago, we wrote about one minimalist design - the Acura TSX - noting that we were "no big fans of Japanese design" but also that the TSX was not the average Japanese, blandly shaped blob, either (see article: '2003 Acura TSX (Euro Accord) advances Honda design'). Now, Callum's Ibuki heralds a return to the minimalism that brought enthusiasts banging on Mazda's doors when the Miata first appeared in 1989. Remember the more from less ideology?

Callum's car is one which has matured without growing old, in that it treats the Miata as a true icon in its own right rather than simply - as in 1989 - a reference to the glorious past of others. There for all to experience is a visual emphasis of Miata's simplicity, but made glamorous.

At the end of the day, the Miata will remain very much its own car, despite using the RX-8 platform. Joe Bakaj notes that Mazda has "strategically invested lots of money in the RX-8, so it makes sense to reuse that investment" ('Additional Mazda nameplates on horizon for U.S. market,' Automotive News, October 27^th, 2003).

"We'd want a different wheelbase and track, but we can reuse the architecture."

Perhaps more importantly than platform logistics or powerplants, the next Miata appears to have a good chance of adhering to the principles that made the original so successful.

The original was designed  by Tom Matano (whose previous experience had included BMW and GM-Holden) and Mark Jordan (the son of period Vice President of GM Design Chuck Jordan and an Opel designer before moving East to work on the Miata project). New Miata is the work of Moray Callum, the brother of Ian Callum (who penned the exquisite Aston Martin DB7, one of our favorite production designs ever, before recently moving to Jaguar). Callum replaced Matano at Mazda in September 2001, when the latter headed for a teaching position at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco.

The original was about light, and well-managed, weight. Today, Ibuki claims to reduce yaw moment by 15% over the current Miata, thanks to packaging that allows the engine to be placed still further back and lower within the car.

The original was affordable - and therein lies the rub. Bakaj has told CAR that there is absolutely no possibility of a rotary in the next-generation. "We want to keep this car affordable," he stressed, "and we are definitely not going to move it any closer to Z4 or Boxster territory" (CAR, March 2004).

Those who want a rotary roadster may well be served, even if not by the Miata. Bakaj has confirmed to Automotive News that Mazda was looking at two-seat coupé and roadster versions of the RX-8.

In conclusion, Mazda is well on its way to recovery now, and is willing and able to translate into steel Moray Callum's ideas for exploring its Japanese heritage.

"So much to like about such a small, simple car," writes CAR's Georg Kacher of the Ibuki. We agree; although the sheer existence of the RX-8, and the Ibuki Concept's use of a hybrid engine and RX-8-sourced platform bits, might have led us to expect more a imaginative powertrain, the next Miata will be a visual blueprint for mainstream Mazda-ness through the next decade.

Wipe a tear from the eye, then, and look at Ibuki with the same clarity which it projects. Many a brand would give up its entire marketing department to be able to justifiably pull off the individual, intelligent simplicity of the Ibuki Concept.