The Mazda MX-5 Miata Had No Chance of Success — Full History — Revelations with Jason Cammisa

(upbeat music) - For three and a half decades Miata has proven the entire car industry wrong. Cars can't be small, cars can't be light, it just can't be done. Well, the Miata did it and it continues to do it. In the process, it has banished to the history books every single competitor that's thrown against it. It's survived economic downturns, pandemics and TikTok and it's done this by adhering to one simple philosophy. Do not ever give the customer what they're asking for. Just give them a good

time. (upbeat music) This video is brought to you by the Hagerty Driver's Club. Sign up today using the link below. (upbeat music) Mazda is a company that in the 1970s and '80s, became defined by the Rotary Engine Powered RX-7. But that wasn't enough for one outspoken, stubborn automotive journalist named Bob Hall, who thought Mazda needed to make a lighter and more affordable sports car than the RX-7 was. Years later, he left his job as a journalist and partly because he speaks Japanese, becam

e one of the first Americans to work at Mazda's US product planning office where he never stopped tormenting everyone to make an LWS, a light weight sports. This is the kind of car that defined European cars at the 1950s and '60s. Alfa Romeo, MG, Triumph, Fiat, Austin Healy, and perhaps more than most, Lotus. They were called sports cars and I'll read you a passage from a magazine that was called Sports Cars Illustrated, way back when these cars ruled the earth. Sports cars were more than just t

wo seaters, they were a way of life, with social protocol, weekend competitions and heroic tales of roadside repairs. Sports cars were much more than cars. They were the nucleus of a movement, a reason to get out of bed on Saturday morning. They were also killed off, mostly in the late 1960s and early 1970s when it seemed American safety regulations would outlaw convertibles altogether. Well then, and when buyers realized that cars didn't need to be flaming, dripping, smoking, fragile, ill engin

eered, poorly assembled, falling apart, rolling oil slicks. What was lost though was the joy of driving and Bob Hall relentlessly nagged his employer to please build something that would bring back the joy. In the early 1980s, Mazda's US operations sent over a document entitled, What Is a Sports Car To An American, outlining the only way it could be successful. There needs to be some measure of performance, but numbers don't matter. It must be simple, it must be light. Seat two and only two and

have a soft top. And the biggest requirement, engine up front, rear wheel drive. Mazda's home office didn't see the importance of that last bit. The world was at the time moving to front wheel drive. In fact, Mazda had just switched its 323 from rear drive to front and said why don't we just make a sports car out of that? After all, Honda had done exactly that with the CRX. Japan also suggested as an alternative, moving that transverse powertrain to the back of the car and making a mid-engine sp

orts car, like Toyota had just done with the MR2. The US said, "No way." And to solve the disagreement, management came up with a design competition. The Tokyo Studio would do the two transverse engine designs, the front wheel drive car and the mid engine one. Meanwhile, those anachronistic California folks would keep it old school. The US design proposal came from Tom Matano, who was vehemently opposed to the other layouts. "An LWS must be an everyday sports car." He said, comparing them to a p

air of running shoes, which you just put on and jog around the block. - Jog around the block. So the midship is like you need a special shoes, special track to utilize the fullest skills to enjoy it. - Nice shirt, nice shirt. Just as big an issue was that the mid engine car would be difficult to produce and heavy because of the additional bulkheads needed to isolate the passengers from the engine. And a front wheel drive sports car? I'd argue there is no such thing as a front wheel drive sports

car, but I don't have to because Lotus argued that for me. The very same year as the Miata debuted, Lotus made its first and only ever front wheel drive sports car. The M100 chassis Elan, ever seen one? I rest my case and the great irony is that the Elan was named after the Elan. The car that inspired not only the Miata's layouts but also its looks. (dramatic music) Bob Hall and Tom Matano were successful in convincing Mazda that the Lotus layout was the only way to go. The design brief for the

LWS was swinging time machine and US based designer, Koichi Hayashi started to work on the design. After three clay models, he sent his work to his boss in Japan who responded, "I felt sorry for Hayashi. "After spending so many years in the US, "he must have eaten too much steak "and forgotten the delicacy of Japanese cuisine." He called us fat. Well, it was a joke, no one was eating the Miata. Tanaka then brutalized the design. So much so that Bob Hall, Tom Matano and the original team were con

vinced he'd killed its chances entirely. Meanwhile, Mazda US's own marketing department kept asking why the car wasn't front wheel drive, which would be cheaper to produce. And when Mazda US's head of sales saw some Polaroids of the nearly finished Roadster, sales said there was no market for the car period, no matter how it looked. The president of Mazda Germany saw the car and said, "There's no sales potential anywhere in Europe." And then Mazda's home office in Japan said, projected sales vol

ume in Japan was so small as to make the car economically non-viable. And after hearing that, it was the US team, the team that had created this and won multiple internal battles, each of which almost killed off the Miata entirely, who said, you know what? Just forget the whole thing. Kill the car, kill it. Dead, gone, gone, forget it. Forget we even asked, this is why we can't have nice things or something like that. But by this point, Mazda was too far in and it wanted an answer from potential

customers directly and so it's sent to Tanaka's full size fiberglass model to California to hold a customer clinic. To everyone's surprise, when the US team saw the model in person, they loved it. Turns out the pictures hadn't done it justice and all of that worrying and arguing was unfounded. Designed with inspiration from Japanese theatrical noh masks that change expression via light and shadow, the Miata was more than a two-dimensional car. It was a face. In fact, when Mazda's computers anal

yzed it, differences in lighting condition gave the Miata 260 different faces compared to just 80 for a typical Mazda. It was immediately endearing, simple, small, elegant, retro, happy. And the 240 people at the customer clinic were enthralled. Without knowing anything about the little convertible or even who made it, 60% of them liked it. 80% of them said they'd willing to buy it and the average price they said they'd be willing to pay for it was more than 40% higher than Mazda's planned price

. More than anything, they thought it was a Porsche or an Alfa Romeo and the primary reason why people didn't like it was because they'd owned a lightweight sports car in the past and it was unreliable. Little did they know it was a Mazda, that wouldn't be a problem. And based on that triumphant customer clinic, the LWS and its team were given a green light. Sir. - Oh, thank you. - Get it, green light. From an engineering perspective, it was all simple. A conventional-ish unibody structure that

used finite element analysis to keep the weigh as absolutely low as possible. This was only possible because the car was a bespoke thing from the get go. Not some heavy sedan turned into a Roadster, which meant the Miata immediately joined the ranks of only a small number of true sports cars made on their own dedicated platform. Every one of which has become an icon. For the Miata, it meant the best of everything. Double wishbone at all four corners, four wheel disc brakes, a close ratio five sp

eed manual, and nothing you didn't need. The engine was mounted almost completely behind the front wheels. A 16 valve four cylinder from the 323 that was turned around 90 degrees and given a new valve cover, designed to be a voluptuous beacon of the aggressive twin cams that lie beneath. It pulled to 7,000 RPM, with a distinctive exhaust note designed by a bunch of engineers who studied and then replicated the sound that made people close their eyes and say. - That sounds like a little red sport

s car. - Between the transmission and differential was the PPF or power plant frame, an ingenious aluminum lattice that rigidly connected the entire drive line. This enormous piece eliminated drive line lash but weighed only 10 pounds. But it gets even better, by allowing the elimination of some of the other mounts, in some it added zero weight to the whole car. Weight was the lightweight sports middle name and the production Miata weighed just 2200 pounds. To get there, every single part needed

to be weight optimized. Even the wheels which are visual copies of 1960 style mini lights, but with seven spokes instead of eight to drop the weight by 10%. Any criticisms of this car being too small, too loud, to anything were met with fierce resistance from everyone involved. The Miata team solution to countries that required a full-size spare tire, which the engineers couldn't fit in the design, well, they just didn't sell the Miata there. Problem solved. If you had a problem with this car,

it's because you had a problem with sports cars. The Miata was undiluted sports car perfection, a blast to slide around a racetrack but fun in a parking lot. It was comfortable. Reliable. Watertight. Well built. - Good. - Charismatic, and thanks to the stubbornness and clear vision of all parties involved on both sides of the Pacific, it's remained that way ever since. The second generation Miata almost came with a single clutch automated manual, but the chief engineer was able to stave off that

awful fad which ruined so many of our favorite turn of the century cars. It was available with a turbo for a short time until that too was dismissed for being contrary to the Miatas purity. The third generation Miata was new from the ground up and the chief engineer said, quote, "The decision not to change the size "has been the hardest part of my work. "It's a challenge to repress the desire "to address every request. "I must focus on keeping the faith "in the lightweight sports true value." R

emember, even the mighty RX-7 rendered itself extinct by chasing speed and comfort at the expense of low cost, lightweight and simplicity. After just two years, total Miata production surpassed that of the Alfa Romeo Spider, which had been on sale for 26 years. In its 10th year, the Miata became the bestselling two seater sports car in history and then it doubled that number, at last count, 1.1 million Miatas as of 2022. The Miata has succeeded where every other so-called lightweight sports car

has come and gone. And it's done that by sticking to the original formula. Adjusted for inflation, this costs less than it did in 1989 and in those intervening three and a half decades, it hasn't grown. It's the same size and it's gained less than 100 pounds. Compare that to the Porsche 911, which has gained 600 pounds, is nine inches longer and eight inches wider, and with just one engine in your choice of transmission and top, Mazda sells just as many Miatas here every year as Porsche sells 91

1's. Even though Porsche makes 37 different variants of the 911, with three transmissions, seven engines, two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, coop convertible target, standard body, wide body, two seat four, seat, dot, dot, dot. By not falling into fads or chasing speed, or growing into something it was just never meant to be, the Miata has wound up being the only true lightweight sports car on the planet. If the original lightweight sports were the nucleus of a movement, the Miata is the positiv

e electric charge that holds together the entire car community. (dramatic music) (car revving)