Priced from $160,888 with COE, the new MX-5 has a greater mission than adding to Mazda’s coffers

SINGAPORE — The all-new Mazda MX-5 was launched here on Thursday evening, with the petite roadster making its local debut at Eurokars’ new $28 million showroom.

We’ve had a quick spin on the track (not literally) in the 1.5G model, but Singapore gets the 2.0-litre model with 160 horsepower and 200Nm of peak pulling power.

The six-speed auto gets to 100km/h in 8 seconds flat and costs $163,888 with COE. There’s a faster version that gets to 100km/h in 7.3 seconds and costs $3,000 less: the six-speed manual.

Like the original MX-5 from 1989, the new, fourth-generation car is aimed at people who enjoy the intimacy of driving a small and lightweight machine. The Mazda might not offer tyre-scorching performance, but it should be rich with the sensations through which people enjoy cars, says Nobuhiro Yamamoto, the MX-5’s program leader. “That’s something we call ‘kan’ — ‘sensation’ in Japanese,” he says.

Yamamoto is an engineer with some pedigree. He was in charge of developing the rotary engine that powered Mazda to success at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1991. The brand is still the only Japanese team to win the famous endurance race.

An MX-5, he says, should be more than a material good. Instead, driving one should awaken something in you. “We are offering quality time,” says Yamamoto.

To achieve this, the engineering team focused on removing every last gramme of excess weight. Even the lever that adjusts the seats uses as little metal as possible, he says. Meanwhile, the car’s press kit takes care to mention that the latest car’s roof is all of 50 grammes lighter than the previous model’s top.

That sense of minimalism is something the MX-5’s designer strived for, as well. Masashi Nakayama joined Mazda in 1989 as an interior designer, and quickly became a customer. His first Mazda? The first-generation MX-5, which he decided to buy when he saw the sales lady climb into the passenger seat. “A voice in my head said, ‘Buy it now’,” he says.

He has kept it ever since. “I think I can say how great the first-generation model is. I’m fully aware of it,” he says. That would seem to make him the perfect person to design the latest one, but in a way it provided a daunting challenge.

“I think the biggest enemy for me was myself,” he says. “I’m very satisfied with the first generation. But I had to make the new model such that I would really want to buy it.” If the latest MX-5 were too similar to the original, in other words, he himself would never consider owning one.

To update the car, he instead focused on getting its proportions right and stripping away all unnecessary detail, just as the engineers shaved off every last gramme.

Nakayama starts to let his hands do the talking, and sketches out the new car quickly, using a few deft lines to highlight its short overhangs, the low nose and the driver-centric driving position.

“It’s very easy to draw. I think this is the most pure model in terms of design,” he says. “The design has to be simple, it has to be loyal to (the mechanical functions) and to the position of the driver.”

While an immense amount of talent and effort seem to have gone into the new MX-5, the roadster segment is something of a niche. Until the first car came along, there wasn’t even a market for them. Before the original MX-5, no carmaker had launched a two-seat sportscar for 23 years.

Its arrival and subsequent success changed that, and the first MX-5 was followed by cars like the Porsche Boxster, Mercedes-Benz SLK and BMW Z3 (now Z4).

READ MORE > We drive the MX-5 1.5G on Mazda’s private test track

The MX-5 is still the most successful roadster ever — 950,000 of them have been sold since 1989 — but even its program leader admits it is a niche model that won’t contribute much to Mazda’s coffers.

Instead, it has a different role within the company. “It has to be the brand icon and represent what Mazda stands for,” says Yamamoto. It’s something of a hero car for employees, too. Yamamoto says that colleagues’ eyes lit up at the sight of the first clay model.

Above all, however, it is the driver that Mazda most wants to inspire with the car. “Over the next 25, 50 years, I hope that this MX-5 will continue to be loved by customers. This is our mission,” he says. “I hope it’s something that keeps stimulating the customer’s life.”

It’s set to be a never-ending mission, too. Even though the MX-5 is expected to sell in small numbers, Yamamoto insists that Mazda has to keep producing one. It’s a remarkable assertion for a relatively small player with roughly 2 percent of the global car market and a patchy profit record, but perhaps money isn’t everything. “We believe that this vehicle is necessary in society,” says Yamamoto.

READ MORE > How Mazda is designing a succesful future