"Kan" is a word that Nobuhiro Yamamoto used to not easily say. Because "Kan" means "feeling" in Japanese and has lost little in the vocabulary of an engineer. But since Yamamoto seven years ago, the development of the new Mazda MX-5, he speaks of little more. "A rush of emotions," Yamamoto sums up the mission for perhaps the most important Mazda. Even if the car is only in the garage, the owner should just feel good. And once he's at the wheel, then he should not even want to get off.
For Yamamoto has consistently developed the car around the driver around, has voluntarily shortened the wheelbase and with him the interior by two centimeters, filed at all corners, the hood pressed down and the windscreen moved backwards. The result is a design that looks like it has shrunk, as if the roadster had not been clad with sheet metal but welded in foil. In addition, the seat down and moved further to the middle - you slip into the now only 3,92 meter short MX-5 like a standard glove and feels the car just as closely connected.
The Mazda can be driven accordingly intuitively. You not only have the car under control, but man and machine come so close that you control this roadster almost with the power of your thoughts. One just twitches with the little finger and the car makes a big set. No sooner have you looked at a curve than the MX-5 is already around the corner. And as if by itself the hand falls after opening the steering on the gear shift and pops the next gear in, so that the frenzy only yes no end.
The project manager makes no compromises for this experience, neither when cutting, nor at the equipment. Because when it comes to unnecessary space or extra pounds, there Yamamoto san is enormously stingy. He is delighted with the new-fashioned LED headlights because they are more compact, save space and only allow the short, flat stem. The glove compartment, for example, he has already sacrificed because of the inevitable Cupholdern have become tiny Aufsteck-Halter and electric helpers do not come into the car: All right, you do not have to crank the windows. The mirrors are adjusted at the push of a button. There is air conditioning and of course the infotainment system known from the Mazda3. After all, even in a pleasure car is not always the way the goal. But the seats are adjusted by hand and the roof is thrown back as usual with one arm. "An electric top would be a betrayal of the original," says one of Yamamoto's colleagues. "And besides, 15 kilos would have cost us more weight.
On the other hand, Yamamoto has achieved an impressive success in the diet. In comparison with other roadsters, although the last MX-5 was still a lightweight. But Yamamoto found the car too greasy and cumbersome. "It had to become slimmer again", says Yamamoto and had consistently implemented this requirement: the shrunk format, a smaller base motor, high-strength steels and more aluminum in the body and chassis - this pushes the weight by more than 100 kilos and brings the new one MX-5 on pretty much a ton. That by the way even the consumption drops to six liters and the fun brakes from the fraction of Klimakümmerer takes the wind out of the sails, so no harm.
The handy format, the short wheelbase and the low weight, plus a barrel organ from the engine, a crisp, short manual gearbox and of course the obligatory rear-wheel drive - there is a fun grenade that steals the show from almost every adult sports car. It does not matter that the longitudinally mounted four-cylinder has only a measly 1,5 liter displacement, produces lukewarm 96 kW / 131 PS and tugs at no more than 150 Nm at the comparatively lean 16 tax collectors. Rarely have the almost nine seconds from 0 to 100 felt so short and the 200 km / h peak as fast as in this car. And whatever skepticism remains despite everything, the wind blows away with the top down for the first few meters: "No other car has as much 'Sensational Kan' as the Mazda MX-5," says project manager Yamamoto and once has his new favorite word drop more. Great emotions in a small car and the burden of the legend of 25 years and nearly a million cars - you have to look Yamamoto, if the engineer sometimes comes to philosophizing.
But despite all the sentimentalism, Mazda still has men like Jeff Gaydon. He is head of the European headquarters in Leverkusen and has to sell the MX-5 from August. First of all, this should be an easy exercise. Especially since the basic price should hardly change and the fun should therefore start at around 23.000 euros. But it's not easy. Because the figures for the open-air models are in free fall and no one dares to say whether the MX-5 can stop this trend exactly as it did before 25 years ago. Gaydon therefore has to think carefully about how many cars he will order in Japan - and risk the same mistake as his predecessor in 1990. He ordered so few cars at the market launch that the MX-5 was sold out almost overnight. A few customers were allowed to indulge in luck at the time, but everyone else had a pretty bad “Kan”. Heart palpitations for everyone looks somehow different.
Author: Benjamin Bessinger / SP-X