Thirty years ago in Wheels magazine’s January 1990, which named the original Mazda MX-5 Car of the Year, I wrote:
“I’ll admit I’m biased. You see, I love the MX-5. Mazda’s delectable little sports car is exactly the kind of machine I’ve been pleading for the world’s car makers to build for more than two decades. I’ve no doubt that 25-years hence people will be restoring MX-5s and fondly remembering the impact this tiny car had. Be in no doubt about the brilliance of its concept and execution. Driver involvement is absolute. I defy anybody who claims to enjoy cars not to come back from a drive in one with a smirk.”
You know better than anybody that nothing has changed. The MX-5 remains an authentic driver’s sports car. And my prophecy has come to pass: today enthusiasts are restoring their old MX-5s.
We should ask why? The answer is easy: brave little Mazda gave the world a car so desirable, so pure, so brilliant, that it became… and remains…the world’s best-selling roadster.
The MX-5 was instantly recognised as a modern interpretation of the classic British Sportscar: small, simple and affordable, it was Japan’s version of yesterday’s MG, Triumph and Austin-Healey roadsters. Except it was reliable, didn’t leak oil and the soft top could be erected in seconds.
The story of how Mazda created your car is well known to many of you, but it deserves repeating as a perfect example of how one person’s vision and tenacity can change motoring.
I first met American Bob Hall at the GM J-car launch – the Holden Camira in Australia – in Arizona in early 1981. As Wheels magazine’s editor I was the only Australian to attend the release. When Bob discovered an Aussie journalist among the throng of Yanks he was my best mate. Through his infectious enthusiasm, I discovered an encyclopaedic knowledge of Australian cars – he knew everything about the Leyland P76, VH Valiants and loved the LH Torana – an eccentric insight to 1950s B-grade movies and serials, a passion for the 1960s British TV series Thunderbirds, and a vast appetite for Diet Pepsi.
I learned that he taught himself Japanese by reading comic books and that he and his twin brother Jim, another car nut who now works as an internal disruptor for General Motors, were born in 1953. Their father developed a passion for British sports cars while flying B-25 bombers and the MGs, Triumphs, and Austin-Healeys he owned over the years mesmerized the Hall boys.
Bob also proved to Motor Trend magazine’s editor that he knew more about Japanese cars than anyone on staff and earned a position on the magazine at age 20.
What happened next is the stuff of legends. On a press trip to Hiroshima in 1978, Hall enjoyed an audience with Kenichi Yamamoto, Mazda’s head of R&D. Yamamoto asked Hall what kind of cars Mazda should build in the future. This was exactly the opening the animated enthusiast needed.
“I shifted into overdrive,” Hall recalled years later. “The bugs-in-teeth, wind-in-hair classically British sportsters were expiring. My idea was to revive the category by recasting Mazda’s 323 rear-drive econobox as a two-seat roadster. I did this horrible chalkboard scribble, suggesting Mazda should build an affordable open rear-drive sports car. Yamamoto asked “Why?”
“I replied because there aren’t any left. He seemed to understand, but I didn’t think anything would come of it.
“Yamamoto put on his poker face, so I had no idea what he thought of my idea”.
In 1981, Hall took a product planning job with Mazda Design in California and one day, while working on the B2000 ute, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Yamamoto. Bob was told, “You should be working on your light-weight sports car”.
That was all Hall needed, though his American boss said he could only work on the project before 8.30am, at lunch time, and after 5.30pm.
“I learned this was how Yamamoto tested people,” Bob told me, “to see how much they really believed in their ideas that they would work on them in their own time. I guess I passed the test.”
Hall’s positioning paper, submitted to Mazda’s planning department, proposed recycling existing components—a four-cylinder engine, manual transmission, rear axle, possibly even an existing floorpan—to minimise cost. A year later, his idea became an off-line project not slated for production. While the Japanese favoured either a front-engine/front-drive or mid-engine/rear-drive coupe, the U.S. team held firm on a front-engine/rear-drive roadster… or nothing. So obsessive did Hall become that he earned the nickname Ikigai – eye-ka-guy – a Japanese word meaning the reason why one is put on earth.
To better understand the feel and character of the sports car genre, Mazda bought second-hand versions of the Lotus Elan and Triumph Spitfire and insisted the people involved in the project comprehend the concept, firstly by driving them frequently and, secondly, by stripping them down to understand their simplicity.
Slowly but steadily, the MX-5 began to take shape. In 1985, Yamamoto climbed the corporate ladder to become Mazda’s president. One of his first acts was recommending the lightweight sports car for production approval. Toshihiko Hirai became the chief engineer responsible for the MX-5’s development and, according to a too-modest Bob Hall, is the true father of the car.
Bob remembers one research clinic in the Pasadena Convention Centre in LA, ironically just 400 metres from where he now lives, aimed at finding out what people would be happy to pay for the MX-5.
Bob says, “US$8,800 was the teaser target price we used for costing and specifications for the base car. We envisioned three trim/spec levels from the start with no real mechanical difference between them, save tire size on the base model.
“In the end the $8,800 was just doable. As in China, eight is lucky to the Japanese, so we aligned with that as long as the base model was offered in relatively limited volume.
The clinic ‘car’ (a full-scale fiberglass model with complete interior and opening doors, looking exactly like a production car except it had no badges and was riding on Alfa 33 wheels) was shown to ‘respondents’ at the Convention Centre over a three-day period. They were asked things relating to spec and price. It was not a design clinic. Both a questionnaire and interviews were used without ever mentioning the mystery car’s price or identity.
Respondents were asked what specification they expected it would have, what they thought it would cost, what it should cost, and what they would pay. When all the numbers were added, subtracted, rounded and averaged, the target group indicated that the MX-5 should cost something like US$16,900.
The research had a hugely positive impact on senior management. The Powers-That-Be in Hiroshima decided the base price would be something under US$14,000, but not too much under (like US13,800…for good luck they kept an ‘8’). Needless to say, when the MX-5 went on sale demand far surpassed supply. The dealers charged $3,000 for add-ons like floor mats. Buyers were told if they didn’t like that, they could go elsewhere. And ‘elsewhere’ always seemed to have the same damned floor mats…”
I’m jumping ahead here.
In 1991, Mazda announced plans for Amati, a new, up-market brand to challenge Lexus with the aim of making Mazda Japan’s number-three car maker after Toyota and Honda. A range of posh models was planned, including even a V12 sedan. But in 1992 the Japanese economy imploded and despite the hundreds of millions spent on development and the commitment to tooling of at least two models, Amati was quickly forgotten and almost written out of Mazda’s history.
Losses mounted and ultimately Mazda fell into the hands of Ford. What few people realise is that so lucrative had the MX-5 become that during this period in the mid-1990s the little sports car was the only profitable model in Mazda’s range.
Across the years Bob and I kept in touch. He rang me on September 25, 1983, keen to prove that at least one American was enthusiastically supporting Australia to win the last race in the America’s Cup.
When I moved to Italy in late 1988 to work for Autocar and Wheels magazines, Bob provided background for the first MX-5 story I wrote. Thanks to Bob, I’m proud to say the Autocar, February 8, 1989 story, coinciding with the MX-5’s official unveiling, was the first to reveal the role of Bob, along with designers Tom Matano and Mark Jordan, in the creation of the MX-5.
In 1994, tiring of the internal politics, Bob wanted out and I helped him return to motoring journalism at Wheels.
He later joined Proton and in 2014 moved to Geely, the Chinese car maker and owner of Volvo, and is now a key player in Geely’s Californian design studio.
What does Bob think of today’s MX-5?
“If I separate myself from the original” Hall says. “This is a much better car for today, a much better Miata. Period. And that’s independent of time and place.”
A few weeks ago, Autocar magazine voted the current Mazda MX-5 the best driver’s car in Britain. Quite rightly the honours keep coming.
Beyond winning three Wheels’ COTY awards, the MX-5 proved a personal hit with Mike McCarthy, the magazine’s long-time technical editor. Mike was the first non-Mazda person to drive an MX-5 in Australia and what followed could be described as nature’s course.
His first NA 1.6 was bought in 1990 and superseded in ’94 by an NA 1.8, which made way for an NB8 in late 1998. Come mid-2001 McCarthy upgraded to an NB8B.
Nine years hence that car continued to be enjoyed until, waiting top-down at traffic lights, a bloke in a ute, asked if he’d be interested in selling. Mike shouted his phone number and drove away, not expecting to hear more.
Two days later the bloke rang, they met, he produced a brown paper bag full of bank notes and the deal was done. Within the month McCarthy was in an NC Roadster Coupe, his first automatic. By April 2014, several years into retirement, the combination of tight parking, long doors and increasingly creaky hips prompted a reluctant switch to a more accessible hot hatch.
So, five MXes spread over 24-years. No big deal . . . Mike racked up tens of thousands of kays with nary a single malfunction, apart from a flat tyre on a club run.
McCarthy reckons MX-5s began making their reliability point when they saw 150,000 clicks error-free. Then 200,000 became the benchmark and now there are original examples with over 300,000kms on the odo.
Mike’s MX-5 experience extends beyond the personal cars. First in ’89 and again in 2000, Mike and his wife Patsy drove MX-5s the length of Japan, top to bottom via its four main islands for Wheels and Sports Car World magazines. He especially remembers waiting for a car ferry in 1989, when an incredulous clerk led him to a wall phone. On the other end, ringing from Melbourne, were Joe Nishihara (who helped with the route and schedule), and the late, great Mike Quist, Mazda Australia’s PR boss. They were checking to see that the McCarthys were on route and on time.
A decade later, on a club run McCarthy spotted a young bloke with the same dark blue of the car they’d owned.
Of course, they chatted. Mike asked what attracted him to the MX-5. “You might not believe it,” he was told, “but I made up my mind to own one 10-years ago when I was 15.
“I was reading a Sports Car World magazine feature about a couple driving an MX-5 the length of Japan”.
