The Mazdas you’ve never heard of

Naming Hiroshima’s biggest hits is easy. Identifying some of its most unexpected and unusual products … well, that’s a whole different challenge, perhaps. Today’s story is about those ‘Q’ (for quirky) efforts.

Hold on a minute … isn’t that a …? Yup, sure is. the mighty Mazda Road Pacer.

IN 1930 Mazda produced 30 250cc 4-stroke motorbikes - and the prototype won the first race it entered.

 In 1965, it built a futuristic 26 seat ‘glasshouse’ public bus that was unlike its rivals.

 More recently, it created a suitcase car. Yes, really. Luggage that could be driven.

 In the year that Mazda marks its 100th anniversary and celebrates the people, products and achievements of the last century, today’s contribution from the brand’s public relations department offers insight into some of the most unexpected, unusual and little-known vehicles produced by Hiroshima.

 From curious concepts and long-forgotten prototypes to vehicles that actually made production yet were destined to become rarities, this is an odd bunch whose contribution to Mazda’s history reflects engineering ingenuity and a convention-defying spirit.

 The courage to question common practices and forge new paths in engineering and design that others considered unfeasible has driven the team at Mazda since 1920.

 Along the way Mazda was the first Japanese brand to win the Le Mans 24 Hour race, commercially launched the rotary engine in the iconic Cosmo Sport 110S, created the world’s best-selling two seat roadster - the Mazda MX-5 - and with Skyactiv-X introduced the world’s first production compression ignition petrol engine.

 Yet away from these famous significant moments and the countless coupes, sedans, sports cars, family cars, commercial vehicles and roadsters Mazda has become famous for, there’s a hidden story of the projects forgotten by time, so we dig even deeper into the history file to unearth the Mazdas you’ve never heard of. The first of which is the Mazda motorbike, which for a company that today is famed for creating a range of attractively styled and great to drive SUVs and cars, is a real surprise.

 Having started life as a cork products manufacturing company in 1920 before progressing to engineering when industrialist Jujiro Matsuda took charge of Toyo Cork Kogyo Co Ltd in 1921 and transformed the business first into a machine tool producer.

 The progression from here to cars via three-wheeled trikes like the 1931 Mazda Go is relatively well known, but the fact that before this Mazda produced a prototype motorcycle is a little-known paragraph in the Mazda history book.

Motorcycle racing was popular in Japan in the late 20s with most of the bikes imported or assembled in Japan from imported parts. Toyo Kogyo, as Mazda was then known, wanted to build a domestic Japanese bike and began development of a prototype in 1929. A 250cc 2-stroke prototype motorbike was revealed in October, 1930, and to everyone’s surprise it won its first race beating a British-made Ariel, which were one of the most-popular bike brands in the 30s’ and well-respected in Japan.

Toyo Kogyo went on to produce 30 more motorcycles in 1930, but commercially Matsuda took the decision to instead focus attention on developing the practical Mazda Go three-wheeler, setting the company on the road to success in automobiles rather than motorbikes, and leaving Mazda’s flirtation with motorbikes as a small snippet in the 100-year story of Mazda.

Mazda’s first car also never made it beyond the gestation period either, in 1940 Mazda built a small two-door prototype car called the PKW prototype (below), but the unset of World War II meant it never reached production and Mazda’s post-war reconstruction focused on the production of the Type GA and Type GB three-wheeled Mazda Go inspired three wheeled trucks and their ever bigger and more sophisticated successors.

However, amongst these successful and popular three-wheeled trike trucks Mazda also produced another one of its little-known four-wheeled pioneers – the Type-CA one-ton four-wheeled truck, which was a small open sided canvas roofed, split-screen open-decked truck that bore some resemblance to a Willys Jeep. It predated Mazda’s first production car the R360 Coupe by ten years and wasn’t as famous as Mazda’s three-wheeled trucks.

While the 1960 Mazda R360 was Mazda’s first car and started a lineage that leads all the way to today’s range, Mazda’s history includes commercial vans, pick-ups and light trucks. But while the smaller mini-bus vehicles based on the different generations of Mazda Bongo are relatively well-known, other bus models fall into the ‘Mazdas you’ve never heard of category’.

Mazda sold its first bus in 1960, it was a 13-seater (below) based on the D1500 cab-over compact truck and was sold to the Japanese Defence Agency. The interior was flexible enough that with the seats folded it was designed to transport injured soldiers on stretchers, and the D1500 bus was exported to the Middle East with centre-opening freestyle doors at the back that enhanced its usability as an ambulance.

Mazda’s first bus for general public use was the 1965 25-seater Mazda Light Bus Type-A. Based on a concept shown at the 1964 Tokyo Motor Show, with its huge curved laminated safety glass windscreen and futuristic styling it was a world away from the traditional buses found in Europe in the 60s. Into the 1970s Mazda continued to produce upscale mini-buses using the Parkway model name and in 1974 even introduced the world’s first rotary engine powered bus: the Parkway 26.

Incredibly, as futuristic as the 1965 Light Bus looked and as unique as the 1974 rotary Parkway bus was, both looked positively conventional compared to the 1974 Mazda CVS Personal Car Concept. Mazda’s look into transportation possibilities outside the realm of driver-controlled vehicles, CVS stood for computer-controlled vehicle system, and the CVS was a wheel at each corner box with sliding doors and a spacious interior designed for passenger comfort, including big leather chairs and a telephone.

However, forward-looking computer-controlled transport pods weren’t the only 70s oddities that fall into the Mazdas you’ve never heard of category

Created to meet Mazda’s desire to have a large executive car to be used by Japanese government officials, the little-known Mazda Road Pacer AP was launched in 1975. It used Holden HJ bodies, which were shipped to Japan without engines, whereupon Mazda fitted the 135ps 13B rotary engine. 

Designed to take on the grandly named Toyota Century, Nissan President and Isuzu Statesman De Ville, the Road Pacer AP featured luxuries such as speed related central locking and even an inbuilt dictation machine. Only sold in Japan, just 800 were produced between 1975 and 1977.

 Another global anomaly in Mazda’s history is the Mazda Pathfinder (above), a traditional 4X4 exclusively assembled and sold in Burma it was a rugged off-roader popular with the military and police. Powered by a 90ps engine it was offered with either a canvas roof or as enclosed nine-seat version, largely unknown in the rest of the world, a few can still be seen on the roads of Myanmar today.        

Even stranger than the Burmese built off-roader, futuristic bus or the Australian based limousine is the 1991 Mazda Suitcase Car. The development of a functioning car built into a piece of luggage came about thanks to the 1991 ‘Fantasy yard’ event - an inter-departmental contest to see which group of Mazda employees could come up with the most innovative and creative solution to produce a moving machine.

A select group of seven engineers from Mazda’s manual transmission testing and research group purchased the largest Samsonite suitcase they could find and a quarter size pocket motorbike and set to work on their idea. The 33.6cc two-stroke engine, handlebars from the minibike were fitted into the suitcase, with the rear wheels slotted onto the outside of the case, while the front wheel would pop through a removable hatch in the front. The suitcase car took just minutes to assemble and had a top speed of 30kmh, while the original prototype was accidentally destroyed just a few months after the ‘Fantasy Yard’ event, one Mazda suitcase car still remains in existence.

 The same sense of freedom of thinking for engineers and designers that led to a collaboration with the London Royal College of Art in 1993 to sponsor their design project to design to come up with a taxi concept for a future (above) where space would restrict vehicle size. While not an official Mazda concept, Mazda assisted by building the prototype, which was a futuristic looking narrow-track pod shaped mini-car, that was 20 years ahead of its time.  

Many of these oddities are a distant memory nowadays, but alongside the more famous models, competition success and records they form part of the history of Mazda - an independent car brand that has always pushed the boundaries of design and engineering to create award-winning vehicles and unique products.

Today, Mazda continues to defy convention to make things better, and as the firm enters its second century, the ingenuity and passion for automotive excellence that has flowed through the Mazda company for its first 100 years is still at the heart of everything the company does.  

High-speed spin cycle

Coupes, sedans, station wagons and sports cars … even a pick-up truck and a bus, plus multiple concepts and a fair few race cars. The power of smooth and high-revving Mazda rotaries has spread far.

NO consideration of the 100-year history of Mazda would be complete without celebrating this Hiroshima brand’s convention-defying development and success with the rotary engine.

From the launch of the 1967 Mazda Cosmo to the end of RX-8 production in 2012, Mazda produced just shy of two million rotary production cars.

Yet, arguably it was the rotary engine’s success in competition that made it and the Mazda brand famous and helped to sell those production models.

From Mazda’s very first efforts in international motorsport with the Cosmo in 1968, the rotary engine’s lightweight, small size, power and fast revving nature have made it perfect for competition. In the early 1970s the Mazda RX-3 was raced in championships around the globe, while the first-generation RX-7 took this to a new level winning championships on four continents.

the Cosmo was Mazda’s first production rotary car, produced in 1967 and based on this 1963 concept revealed at the 1963 Tokyo motor show. Seven years on, Mazda wheeled out the somewhat more adventurous RX500, seen below at its unveiling and now a museum piece, taken to the Mazda’dedicated 2014 Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Most famously, in 1991 the Mazda 787B of Johnny Herbert, Volker Weidler and Bertrand Gachot won the Le Mans 24 Hours – making Mazda the first Japanese brand to do so. 

However, it wasn’t just four decades of production cars and motorsport success that made the rotary famous.

Mazda’s hallmark engine also appeared in a host of concept cars, so in Mazda’s centenary year we take a look at some of the most radical and advanced rotary powered and inspired concept cars, starting with the prototype rotary sports car driven to the 1963 Tokyo Motor Show by the father of Mazda’s rotary engine, Kenichi Yamamoto. 

Strictly a test prototype rather than a pure concept car, it led to the production of 60 Cosmo test mules in 1965, followed by the first production Cosmo sports cars in 1967. Subtly different from later production Cosmos, the 1963 802 prototypes were the first chapter Mazda’s rotary success story.

Similarly, the Bertone-designed Mazda RX-87 concept of 1967 was almost identical to the beautiful 1969 R130 Luce Coupe production car it previewed and likewise the 1967 RX-85 concept became the 1968 Mazda R100 coupe. 

1967 brought the RX-87 design study

Revealed at the 1970 Tokyo Motor Show, the next rotary concept car was unlike anything seen before, a pure futuristic design it was a showcase for safety technology and looked like a car from a different planet to the Cosmo, Luce and R100 rotary production cars on sale at the time.

The Mazda RX-500 was a wedge shaped mid-engined, rear wheel drive sports car with forward opening butterfly swing doors. Promoted as a road safety test bed, it had multicoloured rear strip lights at the rear that indicated whether the car was speeding up, cruising or slowing down by changing colour. 

The 10A 184kW rotary engine was accessed by gullwing opening engine covers. Painted orange with no headlights for its show debut it was later repainted silver, today the RX-500 concept still draws attention at the Hiroshima City Transport Museum. It also starred on the Cartier Style De Luxe lawn at the 2014 Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Even more radical than the RX-500, the 1983 Mazda Le Mans Prototype was penned by maverick designer Luigi Colani, who was famous for his radical ‘biodynamic’ forms.

the Colani car never went beyond conceptual stage, but was fast. very fast.

While it never went beyond conceptual stage, the 1983 Le Mans Prototype was an extreme wing car that was conceived to be powered by an over 600kW four-rotor engine and could have been capable of 380kmh if it had become a reality. 

The one-off theme continued with the 1985 Mazda MX-03, which unlike the Colani Le Mans Prototype, was a fully working concept. Powered by a triple rotor 232kW engine, this low-slung coupe was pure futuristic exuberance, with a cabin that featured an aircraft style yoke rather than a wheel, plus digital displays and a head-up display, its technology tally also including four-wheel steering and all-wheel drive, while the long low body delivered an aerodynamic Cd figure of just 0.25. 

Completely different from the MX-03, the MX-04 concept was a front-engine rear-wheel drive sports car chassis that had removable fibreglass panels, but not just one, but two different sets, allowing the car to switch from a glass dome roofed coupe to a beach buggy style open sided roadster. Powered by a rotary engine this barmy shape-shifting sports car was shown at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show and while it was never a serious contender for production, by then Mazda was already developing the MX-5, and just two-years later, the most famous non-rotary Mazda sports car arrived. 

No prizes for guessing what the RX-01 concept was a pointer to.

By the 1990s, Mazda’s rotary engine had scored its biggest achievement with victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours, but revealed at the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show, the Mazda RX-01 previewed the next-generation of rotary road cars. A fully drivable concept It featured what would go on to be the Renesis engine that powered the last production rotary to date – the RX-8. With a 2+2 seat layout, some of the RX-01’s styling cues also hinted to the RX-8, which was revealed in 2003. 

Highlighting the flexibility of Mazda’s rotary engine technology, between 2005 and 2007 Mazda produced duel-fuel hydrogen/petrol powered rotary prototype testbed Mazda RX-8s and Mazda5s, which were leased to companies in Japan and Norway.

Highlighting the suitability of rotary engines for use with hydrogen, the RX-8 RE Hydrogen was the fifth Mazda rotary to be powered by hydrogen after earlier HR-X, HR-X2, MX-5 and 626 rotary powered concepts and prototypes. Further highlighting Mazda’s environmental development, the 2007 Mazda5 RE Hydrogen was a plug-in hybrid, while the 2013 Mazda2 EV prototype featured a tiny 330cc 22kW single-rotor range-extender engine. Today, Mazda is committed to the development of a rotary range-extender version of the forthcoming Mazda MX-30. 

Mazda recognised the potentials of the rotary engine with hydrogen, so built a wide variety of development cars, based on current production fare, plus some adventurous concepts, such as 1991’s HR-X concept.

However, other 21st century rotary concepts focused very much on the performance elements of the rotary engine: revealed at the 2008 Detroit Motor Show, the stunning Mazda Furai was built on the chassis of a Courage C65 LMP2 race car and its 331kW triple-rotor engine was powered by ethanol fuel. A fully working race car-based concept, it was developed by Mazda North America and was tested at several US and European tracks. Named Furai meaning ‘sound of wind’, this racy concept was the fifth and last of the ‘Nagare’ line of concept cars from Mazda. 

The fourth car in this lineage also featured a rotary: unveiled in 2007, the Mazda Taiki concept was a dramatically aerodynamically optimised coupe with a tapered teardrop shaped body that scooped inside the covered rear wheels. Inspired by flowing robes its sleek body had a drag coefficient of just 0.25 and it was arguably the most radical looking of the ‘Nagare’ concept cars. With butterfly doors and a darkened glasshouse it was a pure concept fantasy but was conceived to be powered by the same Renesis engine as the RX-8. 

The Furai (above) and Taiki (below) concepts were the last and most alluring of the Nagare line if concepts.

Mazda’s Le Mans heritage with the rotary engine came to the fore again in 2014 with the reveal of the Mazda LM55 Vision Gran Turismo virtual concept car. A digitally rendered concept for the Gran Turismo computer game, this low-slung Le Mans style prototype was named after the race number worn by the winning 787B at Le Mans in 1991. Bringing the performance and sound of the rotary engine to a whole new generation virtually in the gaming world, the LM55 Vision came to life as a full-size show car at the 2015 Goodwood Festival of Speed where it proudly sat atop Mazda’s Kodo design inspired central feature sculpture alongside the Mazda 787B.

However, it was later in 2015 at the Tokyo Motor Show that Mazda revealed what is arguably the most beautiful concept car conceived for a rotary engine: the RX-Vision.

Mazda’s vision of the perfect front-engine, rear-wheel drive sports car and the ultimate expression of Kodo design, the RX-Vision’s stunning proportions and delicate surfacing saw it named the ‘Most Beautiful Concept Car of the Year’ at the 31st Festival Automobile International, while it also made an appearance at the exclusive Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Esta in 2016. Under the long bonnet of the RX-Vision, Mazda’s designers envisaged that this sports car would be powered by a next-generation of rotary engine called Skyactiv-R. 

anyone can drive the RX-Vision GT3 … providing they have a gaming console.

Taking this imagination, a step further and bringing the RX-Vision to life in the virtual world, Mazda’s designers created the RX-Vision GT3. Just as the LM55 came to life in the virtual world in 2014, the RX-Vision GT3 was added to Gran Turismo Sport on May 22. With its wider front and rear track width and expanded wheel arches, the lower and more purposeful GT3 version features the wings and rear diffuser you’d expect of a virtual racer. And rotary fans in the digital world get to enjoy the next-generation four-rotor 420kW Skyactiv-R engine. 

Today, 57 years after the first Cosmo prototype previewed Mazda’s debut rotary sports car, the rotary engine lives on in the hearts and minds of Mazda’s engineers as the technology is explored for its part in Mazda’s multi-solution approach to ever more efficient cars, including range-extender applications. Additionally, concept cars like the RX-Vision influence the look and styling of Mazda’s current range, while the RX-Vision GT3 brings the rotary to life in the virtual world. 

Special edition Mazdas honour a corker Kei

Who’d ever guess a brand that aces with the young-at-heart has just hit its century?

MAZDA marking its 100th year with the business it is best known for nowadays is a reminder that, like most car brands, it started out doing something else.

Still, vehicles are its game now, so the 100th Anniversary Special Edition models that will be availing to Kiwi customers soon are the best carriers of the celebratory mood.

Think of these as being a recognition of what could be called a corker of an idea, which traces back to January 30, 1920, in the make’s home city of Hiroshima, Japan. More about that in a minute.

But, obviously, with vehicles by far and away being what it’s best known for nowadays, they’re the best products to tie back to a special moment in time.

Basically, all the passenger models Mazda makes are coming to the party, with a special trim that’ll has gone into production and will remain available until March next year. None are in New Zealand yet. Mazda NZ will announce more about what cars it will offer and when in coming months.

The special vehicles are easily identified. They’re in a white (Snow Flake White Pearl Mica)-and-burgundy two-tone. Also included are burgundy floor carpets, specially-embossed floor mats and head rests, unique key fobs and centre wheelcaps with a 100th Anniversary logo. And, of course, a special badge.

The colour scheme is all part of the story, being a hat-tip to Mazda’s first passenger car, the R360 Coupe. Which came out 60 years ago.

So what was Mazda up to for the 40 years prior to that? Well, plenty of stuff.

The company’s genesis goes back to the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co Ltd, which was founded in Hiroshima. As the name suggests, it was an industry that made products from cork.

Seven years later the company changed its name to Toyo Kogyo Co Ltd,  and four years after that it moved into the manufacture of vehicles when it introduced a three-wheel ‘truck’ called Mazda-Go, which  was powered by an air-cooled single cylinder motorcycle engine.

This vehicle was the world’s first engine-powered rickshaw, and it also represented first use of the word Mazda, which derives from Ahura Mazda – the god of harmony, intelligence and wisdom. This in the hope that it would brighten the image of the little vehicle. Well, that’s how the company history relates it.

There has also always been a theory that the word had a close association with the company’s founder, Jujiro Matsuda, whose family name was pronounced very close to “Mazda”.

Whatever the reason, the little rickshaw’s name obviously worked, because the Mazda-Go and its successors went on to enjoy a strong career right through into the post-WW2 era, when it began to be replaced by a range of three-wheeled Mazda trucks such as the K360 and the T-2000.

And of course that in turn led to Toyo Kogyo turning its attention to passenger vehicles, which resulted in the 1960 launch of one of the original Japanese ‘Kei’ cars, the famous Mazda R360 Coupe.

And that’s the car that Mazda Motor Corporation is now honouring with its range of 100th Anniversary Special Edition vehicles.

Sales are scheduled to kick off in Japan from June, firstly with the Mazda, Mazda3 and CX-3, followed from July with the CX-30, CX-5, CX-8, MX-5 and RF, and finally from September with the Mazda6.

Then it will be the turn of the rest of the world – New Zealand included – to get their hands on the celebratory cars.

In so many respects the little R360 Coupe is the ideal car for Mazda to use as the centrepoint of its centennial celebrations.

By today’s standards the car looked quite weird. Maybe even kooky. And also by today’s standards it was seriously underpowered – it offered all of 12kW of power and 22Nm of torque.

But this was 1960, a time when Japan was still recovering economically and socially from the ravages of World War 2, and the only way most families could afford a vehicle was to opt for the insurance and tax breaks on offer with the so-called Kei car, which had to be the smallest highway-legal passenger vehicle.

When the first Kei cars were built in 1949, the rules said their engines must have cubic capacities of no more than 150cc. That was increased to 360cc in late 1955, and that immediately led to development of a raft of micro-mini cars including such product as the Suzuki Suzulight and the Subaru 360.

And then, in May 1960, the Mazda R360 Coupe. The little two-door 2+2 had a wheelbase of just 1753mm, weighed 380kg, and was powered by a rear-mounted 356cc engine that developed the 12kW and 22Nm. To put those figures into some sort of perspective, the smallest Mazda you can buy in New Zealand today, the Mazda2, has a 2570mm wheelbase, weighs 1100kg, and has a 1496cc engine that develops 82kW and 144Nm.

But 60 years ago, the Japanese loved the R360. It immediately proved so successful that more than 23,000 of them were sold during the remainder of that year, and it soon gained a massive 65 per cent of the domestic Kei car market. 

As a result, not only did it sell for six years, but it spawned other product – a convertible, a front-engined pickup truck, and perhaps most significantly a four-door sedan called the P360 ‘Carol’ that remained on the market for eight years until 1970.

Actually you can still buy a new Mazda Carol in Japan – but these days it is a rebadged Suzuki Alto. As a result there are plenty of used import Suzuki-built Carols in New Zealand, and we at MotoringNZ.com are aware of at least one 1962 Carol here, but we don’t know if there are any of the original R360 Coupes in the country. We hope there is. Maybe an owner somewhere can contact us to let us know what it is like to drive?

From a technology perspective, what was admirable about the R360 Coupe was its innovation. It was the first use of a four-stroke engine in a passenger vehicle, it had a torque converter, a four-wheel independent suspension, and there was significant use of alloy in an effort to keep its weight down.

Little wonder then that its manufacturer went on to produce the technologically advanced product it is famous for. Product such as all the rotary-engined Mazdas that began with the Cosmo Sport in 1967, the famous MX-5 roadster  from 1989, and all the SkyActiv features in today’s passenger vehicles.

It’s all worth celebrating, isn’t it? So happy 100th birthday, Mazda.