Callum Has Big Plans for a Small Car: Redesigning the Mazda MX-5
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| The current generation Mazda MX-5 Miata incorporates many design cues of the last generation RX-7, no longer available in North America. That said it didn't deviate from the original that won the hearts of sports car enthusiasts around the world. (Photo: Mazda) |
Imagine designing cars for a living. In addition, suppose that you have been chosen to redesign one of the most popular selling sports cars of the last dozen years. While daunting to those on the outside to Scotsman Moray Callum, head of Mazda's worldwide design as of September 2001, it's an honor and challenge he's prepared for.
Callum is cautious but confident about his new assignment. In a recent interview he states, "The MX-5 is a big challenge, and a great challenge". When designing the car he will do his best to incorporate the top selling roadster's original design ideology, however, changes will be made. He continues, "But it has been an icon for Mazda and so we have to stay true to the design concept - it is not going to be a different product."
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| Moray Callum has a major task before him, to redesign one of the world's favorite sports cars. (Photo: Mazda) |
Moray further affirms that he's fully aware of just how difficult the job at hand will be, remarking that "it is a car on which everyone has an opinion and so whatever you do you are not going to please everyone."
Currently, Callum resides near Mazda headquarters in Hiroshima, Japan. Here he discussed some modifications we can expect for the upcoming car. It's likely to be a tad larger due to safety requirements and the resulting technologies that have come to fruition since the roadster's inception in the early '90s.
If we look back at the history of Mazda, we see that the MX-5 was the last sports car designed by the Japanese car company before the economic crisis in Japan. Only in the last 3 years, after Ford took hold of 33% of the company and invested in its future products, has Mazda been able to bring to market new cars incorporating the company's sporting DNA.