CarBrandLogos archive · Mazda · 1989

MazdaMazda MX-5

A British roadster rebuilt by people who wanted it to start every morning.

Photo: 根川大橋 (Negawa Ohashi) · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Mazda history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Mazda MX-5, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The idea came from an American motoring journalist. Bob Hall, working for Mazda in the early 1980s, argued to the company's planners that the small, cheap, front-engined, rear-drive open two-seater had been abandoned by the British industry not because nobody wanted one but because nobody was building one properly. Mazda ran the concept through an internal competition between its Californian and Japanese studios; the Californian proposal, developed with the British engineering firm IAD, won.

Mazda MX-5 NC front · M 93 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Design and engineering

What emerged in 1989 under programme leader Toshihiko Hirai was deliberately conservative in every respect except execution. A 1.6-litre four up front, a five-speed gearbox with a famously short throw, double wishbones at each corner, a manually folding hood that could be raised from the driver's seat with one arm, and a power-plant frame — an aluminium beam rigidly tying engine to differential — that gave the drivetrain a directness bigger cars lacked. Nothing about it was fast. Everything about it responded.

1992-1993 Mazda MX-5 roadster 01 · OSX · Public domain

In production

The reception was immediate and enormous. Dealers took deposits over list price; the British and Italian roadster market, which had been dead for a decade, reopened; and a whole generation of club racing and autocross organised itself around the car. Crucially, it did what the Lotus Elan and MGB had not: it ran reliably, sold through a normal dealer network, and could be a household's only car.

Mazda MX-5 RF IMG 7340 · Alexander-93 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Legacy

Mazda has since resisted every temptation to inflate it. The NB dropped the pop-up headlights, the NC moved to a front-mid-engine layout and offered a folding hard-top, and the ND of 2015 did the harder thing and made the car smaller and lighter than its predecessor at a time when nothing else in the industry was shrinking. Power has crept up modestly across thirty-five years; weight has not. It is the best-selling two-seat sports car ever built, by a very large margin, and it remains in production at Hiroshima. Its real achievement is narrower and more impressive than the sales figure: it is the only car of its kind that survived, and the reason anyone still builds one.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

1989–present

Technical specification

The Mazda MX-5, in detail.

Production: 1989–present
Class: Roadster, sports car (S)
Layout: unbulleted indent list ; Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout (NA and NB) ; Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout#Front mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout; Front mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive (NC and ND)
Assembly: Japan: Hiroshima (Ujina Plant No. 1)
Manufacturer: Mazda

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