Recently on CarNewsCafe we celebrated the Mazda Miata turning 25 and over at Jay Leno’s Garage they honored the special occasion as well. Jay Leno had Bob Hall, the original product planner for the Mazda Miata, along with Tom Matano, the designer of the Mazda Miata, on the show.
Jay Leno talks with Tom Matano and Bob Hall about the history and how the MX-5 project came about at Mazda. The Mazda Miata was the first car to be acoustically tuned to make it “sound” like a sports car. It went officially on sale in July, 1989. Originally in Japan Mazda expected to sale 200-300 a month but the Miata was such a great little sports car they were selling 2000-4000 a month.
The Mazda Miata is the best selling sports car of all time on the face of the planet. Mazda has shipped about 1 million cars over the course of it’s lifetime and as they say in this Jay Leno’s Garage segment, “It’s not the fastest but you get the most smiles per gallon.” Hard to argue with that and even Jay Leno owns a 1996 Mazda Miata.
Article originally published here
