**The Mazda MX-5: A Masterclass in Design and Engineering**
For many car enthusiasts, the Mazda MX-5 is synonymous with the perfect blend of design, engineering, and driving dynamics. The second-generation MX-5, also known as the ND model, is a testament to the company's commitment to creating a vehicle that is both fun to drive and approachable for drivers of all levels.
One of the key characteristics that sets the MX-5 apart from its competitors is its handling. When you get behind the wheel of an MX-5, you know exactly what the car is doing. The car gets unsettled over a bump, but instead of bumpy steering, it exhibits a delightful balance of understeer and oversteer. This is partly due to the car's design philosophy, which prioritizes lightness and agility. The result is a vehicle that feels connected to the road, making it a joy to drive on twisty roads.
The improvement in steering is one of the most noticeable aspects of the MX-5. When you turn the wheel, the car actually turns without needing a full 360-degree rotation. This creates a sense of fluidity and continuity, making the driving experience feel more like what you expect from a modern car. Additionally, there's some feedback in the steering wheel when you go over bumps, giving you a tangible connection to the road.
Compliance is another key feature that sets the MX-5 apart from its rivals. With plenty of roll, the car can take on rough roads with ease, making it an ideal choice for driving enthusiasts who want to explore back roads that may not be well-maintained. This comfort and ability to handle rough terrain are fundamental aspects of the MX-5's design DNA.
Mazda's approach to design has always been centered around a simple, lightweight sports car concept. The company never felt pressured to chase after the latest trends or try to emulate its competitors' designs. Instead, they focused on creating a vehicle that was pure in concept and execution. This approach allowed them to maintain their unique identity while still delivering a successful product.
One notable example of this approach is the Solstice, which was intended to be Mazda's best-selling convertible ever. However, despite the company's efforts, it failed to meet expectations. The ND model MX-5 presented a similar challenge for designers, who had to balance their desire to improve upon the original with the need to stay true to its design DNA.
To achieve this balance, the designers focused on making subtle tweaks to the vehicle while maintaining its core identity. One notable change was the widening of the track to give the car a more stable stance. This required some creative problem-solving, particularly when it came to finding suitable components that would fit within the existing budget constraints.
Another challenge faced by the design team was the development of new headlamps and turn signals that would be both functional and visually appealing. The result was a sleek and compact front end that not only met but exceeded expectations. Mazda's engineers worked tirelessly to minimize the size of these components, ensuring that they wouldn't compromise the car's profile or aesthetic appeal.
Finally, there were some design elements that simply didn't fit with the rest of the car. The iconic door handle, for example, was a particular target for designers and engineers alike. Mazda did manage to carry over an existing door handle from another production car, but it wasn't without controversy. The company ultimately lost out on the opportunity to incorporate the beloved chrome door handle into the design.
Despite these challenges, the ND model MX-5 has proven itself to be a resounding success. With its balanced handling, comfortable ride, and stunning design, it's no wonder that this car has captured the hearts of driving enthusiasts around the world. By staying true to its design philosophy and focusing on delivering a purer, more authentic driving experience, Mazda has created a vehicle that truly stands out from the crowd.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe second-generation Mazda Miata or the NB this was a follow-up to the wildly popular first generation model and Mazda wanted to take what worked and improve certain things and we had a chance to talk with one of the lead designers on the car about the mechanical aspects the stylistic approach and more so let's get started your street you grew up in New York so my father was into cars my brother's into cars we'd go to a lot of the car races up at Watkins Glen and at Lime Rock and so ever since I can remember I mean five six years old I was drawing cars and that's all I ever wanted to do is be a car designer so I went to Art Center and graduated and got a job they hired me right out of school at Chrysler and I spent the first three and a half years of my career at Chrysler and there I was part of the LH program and I got to work on the Viper so for me I've always you know I've been passionate about cars I've loved racing since I was a kid I was inspired by Chaparrals & McLaren's and Formula one cars of the air and so I just there was just something to me about the way a car looks that's really elicits a very emotional an emotional response from me and an emotional kind of feeling that I get inside when I see just a good-looking car the mx-5 in a lot of ways is is iconic for Mazda we just set out to make it the best front-engine rear-drive sports car you could make for the money if you put your passion and your heart into it in a strong belief in what a vehicle should be and you don't compromise you end up developing cars that become iconic so when I was a Chrysler I actually bought a 90 Miata brand-new from showroom and took a lot of heat at Maz at Chrysler at the time because of course in that period of time the Chrysler LeBaron was considered the best-selling convertible and in the United States and what ad what's this little car doing with very simple door panels and simple seats and it didn't have diamond took you know leather seats or anything in it but for me it was the essence of what the car was about it was fun to drive you could put the top down and in five seconds at a traffic light so when I got to Mazda to descend got the opportunity to design the NB I thought it was like a perfect transition for me coming from where I was coming from having owned a first-gen car having lived with the car for five or six years and then getting the OP getting the opportunity to design me and be so I knew what the car was about I knew the essence of the car I knew what I wanted to keep on the car I knew what I wanted to change so I think for at the time Tom Matano was the father of the mx-5 he knew that he saw that that you know you're not coming in and trying to make it something different you understand the essence of the car and this purity of the car but as a young designer you also come up with kind of some fresh approach some fresh thinking in all honesty probably didn't feel like I needed to change a lot but there were a lot of technical reasons why we needed to make changes obviously the car had been out for seven years and it needed to get updated we realized what the NA while a huge success that it was there were a few areas on the car that needed to get a little bit we evolved if you will and some of them where the car needed to become a little bit more masculine not too much so we didn't want to turn it into sort of this bodybuilder sort of physique look we thought we had a philosophy of making it more like somebody training for a triathlon where they're in good shape but they're still lean but they're a little bit more muscular so that was that was kind of the approach we took to making it a little bit more masculine than the na+ we also new regulations were coming online that we weren't going to be allowed to have pop-up headlights anymore for pedestrian impact and other require and also from a pure engineering standpoint the engineers always felt that that was weight that was out ahead of the front wheels that wasn't perfectly from a perfect balance standpoint wasn't ideal wasn't a huge negative to the car but it wasn't ideal from a weight distribution standpoint and as I said with the team in place giving the responsibility to do was a huge responsibility and it was a huge task for me to take on but also having these guys looking over my shoulder knowing that you know I'm I'm messing around with their their babies so to speak the NB Miyata the second-generation it's been restyled in hopes to inject some testosterone into this car to try to help shed its image of being a little bit too soft and a little bit too effeminate the main thing is you have a 1.8 liter here and when you get go back to back from the 1.6 liter to the 1.8 it's incredible how much more powerful this thing seems and including the torque you don't have to completely whine the piss out of it until you get into something like this you feel like you're going a hundred miles an hour but you're barely breaking 50 and that's one of the reasons why the Miatas are so good and it carries over to the end beat you still have a naturally aspirated motor you have simple and easy-to-use controls and anybody that gets behind the wheel of this immediately feels comfortable it's so easy to drive I think that's the main thing about this that surprises me all this time removed it's still enjoyable to drive what it maintains over the original na Miata is almost every single thing that made that car good it's soft compliant comfortable it's not razor sharp to the point where if the car gets unsettled over a bump it doesn't bump steer and oversteer everywhere you know exactly kind of what the car is doing and that's partly why it's so fun to drive and so approachable for most every single person that gets behind the wheel of this and the biggest thing for me is the improvement in the steering now it feels like when you turn the wheel the car actually turns without you having to turn it over almost one continuous cycle to get the thing to turn it feels a lot more like what you expect from a modern car and there's some feedback in the wheel when you go over some bumps yeah okay you feel things through the steering wheel you know that you're going over some rough pavement the biggest thing for me is this is just so comfortable and compliant there's a lot of roll which means you can take it off to back roads that aren't particularly maintained well and still enjoy driving it it's a treat that the enemy otta I mean basically was there and carried over into this generation fundamentally the car had a very simple theme this lightweight sports and we never got away from that and I think regardless of what other brands did they're trying to copy us and kind of embellish it or enhance areas that we're not necessarily doing they asked to thousands an example of just a lot more horsepower and a much stretch aesthetic if you will much more Cabrio would proportion and they were successful for that segment but I don't think people cross shopped s2000s with mx-5 necessarily they were kind of different breed sort of same two-seat rear drive convertibles but with us yeah we certainly looked at the competition but we also knew we had a really good formula so we didn't run around chasing after what other companies were doing other companies did that to us certainly when we brought the mx-5 out but I don't think any of our successful because there wasn't this purity of what they were trying to do and I think with the mx-5 there was a purity of concept that fundamentally ran through the NA through the nd and I think that's why we were successful and we didn't chase after we were told at one point that the Solstice was going to be the best-selling convertible ever and it turned out not to be and for the N be again that was my challenge of designer was keeping it pure making it better but not straying too far from what made the NA so successful with with the end B we also because the vehicle got a little wider we wanted to pull the track out so the suspension was modified slightly fundamentally it was the same suspension setup but the DA arms were wider so the car had a wider track to give it a more stable stance some from a budget perspective we knew we had to use sort of a carry over a lamp inner or a lamp bucket as we call it and again we wanted to make the light as small as possible but there's only so much technology at that time lamp technologies didn't hadn't developed like it has today with LEDs and halogens and and HID lamps so we really were focused on making the lamp look as small as possible and that was probably the biggest challenge was to keep the profile of the hood keep the line in the basic gesture of the mx-5 of DNA but also having these fixed headlamps now in place and so we worked really hard at making them as small as possible and getting him again to fit the profile of the car have the turn signal in there have the high beam in the low beam so that was one challenge the other challenge was we did we didn't get a lot of complaints on the first car but we did get some comments from people about women were breaking their fingernails on the you know the very iconic door handle let the NA head so there were two approaches one was yes that was a cost-saving to carry over a door handle from another production car that for me was a challenge because I felt that was one of the most iconic parts of the vehicle was was the really cool you know chrome door handle that was one of the challenges we fought that for a long time but eventually the project manager and the budgeting issues came into play and so we had to use what was an existing carry over door handle but that and the headlight were probably the two biggest challenges and then because of the success of the first car we kept the beltline was the same the wind chill was the same this side you know the side window is the same and working from a design standpoint some of that is restrictive but on the other hand that's the challenges of designer is having some of these requirements in place that you'd then have to work around and make sure that the design is still as successful as it turned out to be and as beautiful as you wanted it to be without it's sacrificing too much of the overall design concept you youthe second-generation Mazda Miata or the NB this was a follow-up to the wildly popular first generation model and Mazda wanted to take what worked and improve certain things and we had a chance to talk with one of the lead designers on the car about the mechanical aspects the stylistic approach and more so let's get started your street you grew up in New York so my father was into cars my brother's into cars we'd go to a lot of the car races up at Watkins Glen and at Lime Rock and so ever since I can remember I mean five six years old I was drawing cars and that's all I ever wanted to do is be a car designer so I went to Art Center and graduated and got a job they hired me right out of school at Chrysler and I spent the first three and a half years of my career at Chrysler and there I was part of the LH program and I got to work on the Viper so for me I've always you know I've been passionate about cars I've loved racing since I was a kid I was inspired by Chaparrals & McLaren's and Formula one cars of the air and so I just there was just something to me about the way a car looks that's really elicits a very emotional an emotional response from me and an emotional kind of feeling that I get inside when I see just a good-looking car the mx-5 in a lot of ways is is iconic for Mazda we just set out to make it the best front-engine rear-drive sports car you could make for the money if you put your passion and your heart into it in a strong belief in what a vehicle should be and you don't compromise you end up developing cars that become iconic so when I was a Chrysler I actually bought a 90 Miata brand-new from showroom and took a lot of heat at Maz at Chrysler at the time because of course in that period of time the Chrysler LeBaron was considered the best-selling convertible and in the United States and what ad what's this little car doing with very simple door panels and simple seats and it didn't have diamond took you know leather seats or anything in it but for me it was the essence of what the car was about it was fun to drive you could put the top down and in five seconds at a traffic light so when I got to Mazda to descend got the opportunity to design the NB I thought it was like a perfect transition for me coming from where I was coming from having owned a first-gen car having lived with the car for five or six years and then getting the OP getting the opportunity to design me and be so I knew what the car was about I knew the essence of the car I knew what I wanted to keep on the car I knew what I wanted to change so I think for at the time Tom Matano was the father of the mx-5 he knew that he saw that that you know you're not coming in and trying to make it something different you understand the essence of the car and this purity of the car but as a young designer you also come up with kind of some fresh approach some fresh thinking in all honesty probably didn't feel like I needed to change a lot but there were a lot of technical reasons why we needed to make changes obviously the car had been out for seven years and it needed to get updated we realized what the NA while a huge success that it was there were a few areas on the car that needed to get a little bit we evolved if you will and some of them where the car needed to become a little bit more masculine not too much so we didn't want to turn it into sort of this bodybuilder sort of physique look we thought we had a philosophy of making it more like somebody training for a triathlon where they're in good shape but they're still lean but they're a little bit more muscular so that was that was kind of the approach we took to making it a little bit more masculine than the na+ we also new regulations were coming online that we weren't going to be allowed to have pop-up headlights anymore for pedestrian impact and other require and also from a pure engineering standpoint the engineers always felt that that was weight that was out ahead of the front wheels that wasn't perfectly from a perfect balance standpoint wasn't ideal wasn't a huge negative to the car but it wasn't ideal from a weight distribution standpoint and as I said with the team in place giving the responsibility to do was a huge responsibility and it was a huge task for me to take on but also having these guys looking over my shoulder knowing that you know I'm I'm messing around with their their babies so to speak the NB Miyata the second-generation it's been restyled in hopes to inject some testosterone into this car to try to help shed its image of being a little bit too soft and a little bit too effeminate the main thing is you have a 1.8 liter here and when you get go back to back from the 1.6 liter to the 1.8 it's incredible how much more powerful this thing seems and including the torque you don't have to completely whine the piss out of it until you get into something like this you feel like you're going a hundred miles an hour but you're barely breaking 50 and that's one of the reasons why the Miatas are so good and it carries over to the end beat you still have a naturally aspirated motor you have simple and easy-to-use controls and anybody that gets behind the wheel of this immediately feels comfortable it's so easy to drive I think that's the main thing about this that surprises me all this time removed it's still enjoyable to drive what it maintains over the original na Miata is almost every single thing that made that car good it's soft compliant comfortable it's not razor sharp to the point where if the car gets unsettled over a bump it doesn't bump steer and oversteer everywhere you know exactly kind of what the car is doing and that's partly why it's so fun to drive and so approachable for most every single person that gets behind the wheel of this and the biggest thing for me is the improvement in the steering now it feels like when you turn the wheel the car actually turns without you having to turn it over almost one continuous cycle to get the thing to turn it feels a lot more like what you expect from a modern car and there's some feedback in the wheel when you go over some bumps yeah okay you feel things through the steering wheel you know that you're going over some rough pavement the biggest thing for me is this is just so comfortable and compliant there's a lot of roll which means you can take it off to back roads that aren't particularly maintained well and still enjoy driving it it's a treat that the enemy otta I mean basically was there and carried over into this generation fundamentally the car had a very simple theme this lightweight sports and we never got away from that and I think regardless of what other brands did they're trying to copy us and kind of embellish it or enhance areas that we're not necessarily doing they asked to thousands an example of just a lot more horsepower and a much stretch aesthetic if you will much more Cabrio would proportion and they were successful for that segment but I don't think people cross shopped s2000s with mx-5 necessarily they were kind of different breed sort of same two-seat rear drive convertibles but with us yeah we certainly looked at the competition but we also knew we had a really good formula so we didn't run around chasing after what other companies were doing other companies did that to us certainly when we brought the mx-5 out but I don't think any of our successful because there wasn't this purity of what they were trying to do and I think with the mx-5 there was a purity of concept that fundamentally ran through the NA through the nd and I think that's why we were successful and we didn't chase after we were told at one point that the Solstice was going to be the best-selling convertible ever and it turned out not to be and for the N be again that was my challenge of designer was keeping it pure making it better but not straying too far from what made the NA so successful with with the end B we also because the vehicle got a little wider we wanted to pull the track out so the suspension was modified slightly fundamentally it was the same suspension setup but the DA arms were wider so the car had a wider track to give it a more stable stance some from a budget perspective we knew we had to use sort of a carry over a lamp inner or a lamp bucket as we call it and again we wanted to make the light as small as possible but there's only so much technology at that time lamp technologies didn't hadn't developed like it has today with LEDs and halogens and and HID lamps so we really were focused on making the lamp look as small as possible and that was probably the biggest challenge was to keep the profile of the hood keep the line in the basic gesture of the mx-5 of DNA but also having these fixed headlamps now in place and so we worked really hard at making them as small as possible and getting him again to fit the profile of the car have the turn signal in there have the high beam in the low beam so that was one challenge the other challenge was we did we didn't get a lot of complaints on the first car but we did get some comments from people about women were breaking their fingernails on the you know the very iconic door handle let the NA head so there were two approaches one was yes that was a cost-saving to carry over a door handle from another production car that for me was a challenge because I felt that was one of the most iconic parts of the vehicle was was the really cool you know chrome door handle that was one of the challenges we fought that for a long time but eventually the project manager and the budgeting issues came into play and so we had to use what was an existing carry over door handle but that and the headlight were probably the two biggest challenges and then because of the success of the first car we kept the beltline was the same the wind chill was the same this side you know the side window is the same and working from a design standpoint some of that is restrictive but on the other hand that's the challenges of designer is having some of these requirements in place that you'd then have to work around and make sure that the design is still as successful as it turned out to be and as beautiful as you wanted it to be without it's sacrificing too much of the overall design concept you you\n"
