Mazda restores the first MX
Thursday, 29 April 2021
The Mazda MX badge is most famously known for the fantastic MX-5 sports car, so why is the company tarnishing that heritage putting it on an electric small SUV in the form of the MX-30?
Well, that’s because there is a far deeper history to the MX name than just the small sports car that made it famous, and Mazda has just driven that point home by restoring the first car to wear the MX badge, both as part of the company’s 100th anniversary celebrations last year and to mark the MX-30 going on sale around the world, including right here in New Zealand.
“MX” actually stands for “Mazda eXperimental” and, according to the company the prefix is given to a car that 'takes on a challenge to create and deliver new values without being confined by convention regardless of vehicle type.'
To that end, the very first car to wear the MX badge, and the one just restored by Mazda, is the MX-81 Aria that was revealed at the 1981 Tokyo motor show.
**READ MORE:
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* Mazda reveals special 100th birthday models
* Five cars that tried to take on the Mazda MX-5 and failed
**
The MX-81 Aria was a small wedge-shaped coupe designed by Marc Dechamps for Turin based coachbuilder Bertone. Based on Mazda 323, the futuristic wedge-shaped hatchback boasted striking gold paint, a huge glasshouse and pop-up headlights, but with its recessed square steering wheel, TV screen cockpit and side swinging front seats, it was arguably the interior that was the most radical.
Although lots of prototypes and concepts are destroyed once exhibited, in 2019(the year the MX-30 debuted at the Tokyo motor show) Nobuhiro Yamamoto – the former fourth-generation MX-5 programme manager and rotary engine developer – found the MX-81 in a warehouse at Mazda’s Headquarters in Hiroshima.
From this discovery came the idea to restore the car, and it was shipped to Mazda Italy, from where it has been painstakingly restored by SuperStile in Turin. Fittingly, the completion of the restoration was celebrated by the recreation of the original press images of the MX-81 in front of Milan Cathedral.
However, the Mazda MX-81 was only the beginning of the story of the MX badge, which has been used more than a dozen times across a broad spread of production, concept and racing Mazdas.
Following on from the MX-81 was the 1983 MX-02 concept car, a big flat sided five-door hatch with large windows, aerodynamic rear wheel covers and flared in door mirrors, and the one-off theme continued with the 1985 Mazda MX-03, which again was a radical looking concept car.
Revealed at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show, the MX-04 was a front-engine rear-wheel drive sports car chassis that had removable fibreglass panels.
The MX-04 was never a serious contender for production, but it’s layout and underpinnings did point to the next MX car that Mazda had under development and which was definitely intended for production – MX Project 05 that would eventually appear as the first production MX car, the MX-5.
The next cars to wear the MX badge were the MX-3 and MX-6 production coupes, both built on the MX-5’s success and offered very different coupe styles, and since then the MX prefix has been used on a variety of concepts and even an aborted racing car.
The MXR-01 was V10-powered successor to the legendary rotary-powered 787B racing car that was planned after the FIA banned rotary engines from the World Sportscar Championship following the 787B’s famous win at Le Mans in 1991. Sadly the championship collapsed before it could race.
So taken in the context of its history, Mazda’s first production EV is a very fitting choice to mear the MX badge, and the fact that it is the closest production car in terms of layout to the original MX-81 Aria makes the restoration even more fitting.