The ND Miata arrived like a lightning bolt. At a time when cars grew increasingly complex and increasingly large, Mazda’s fourth-gen roadster chose another path. This was a car far smaller and lighter than its predecessor, barely bigger and heavier than the original Miata of 1989.
This new Miata was a landmark upon its arrival in 2014, and even ten years after its launch, it sets the standard for all other modern sports cars. Nothing else on the road offers the same level of purity. Nothing else is more focused on fun.
The stories of earlier Miatas, NA, NB, and NC, are well told. But not the ND’s. Motor1 spoke with a number of people central to the car’s development. Interviews with those in Japan were conducted with the aid of interpreters. Some conversations have been lightly edited for clarity. We’ve kept editorialization to an absolute minimum, instead relying on the spoken word of those who breathed the ND’s story to life.
I. Joy of the Moment, Joy of Life
The story of the ND Miata starts with the third-generation Miata, called the NC. It was produced between 2005-2015. The NC shares its platform with the larger RX-8 sports car. While Mazda engineers and Miata fans agreed the NC was a very good car, it never hit the same highs as the first Miata, the NA.
Nobuhiro Yamamoto (Retired Program Manager, ND Miata): Whether it’s performance, fuel economy or collision safety… the NC was superior to the NB. However, when you ask a customer, "Is this a car you want to buy," things don’t work out as you plan. It’s not that easy, especially with Japanese customers.
They would say, "Yamamoto-san, the NC is a great car, it’s a safe car, but it’s just not as fun as the NA at all." Every engineer, it struck their heart. They felt it right away, the pain.
Ken Saward (Design Director, Mazda North American Operations, 1990-2021): When the NC was done, it was a different time in the company, and they were struggling a little bit. So they tried to combine a lot of the technology and chassis elements with the RX-8. So that car was kind of heavy, it just lost its kind of cuteness, if you will, the honesty of the first car.
Yamamoto-san was put in charge of developing a new front-engine rear-drive platform for both the Miata and RX-7 in 2007, the new Miata to be released in 2012. Following the Lehman Brothers collapse of 2008, Mazda decided to focus solely on a new Miata to debut in 2015.
Yamamoto: What must this car be? What must it represent? It had to be something we were proud of, so the team took extra time into developing what the concept is, what kind of values it’s going to represent as a vehicle. What are the ideas that are going to go into it?
Dave Coleman (Vehicle Dynamics Manager, Mazda North American Operations): We started identifying that there are basically three different kinds of customers for the car. There are people who buy it as a cute convertible, people like us who buy it as a sports car, and people for whom it’s more of a GT, a little Mercedes SL kind of thing.
That really helped clarify how to package the car and sell it more effectively, but refocusing [the ND] back in the direction of a pure driver’s car came from the fact that all the people working on the car were the [sports-car] people.
Yamamoto: Up until now, we were looking at customers, feedback from marketing… You know "The customer says this, so make this." But that wasn't real, that wasn't what they wanted. It was "What do we want? What do we want to do? And, what kind of car do we want for ourselves?" It forced us to ask “Why was the NA so popular? What were the elements that appealed so much to people?”
It boiled down to what the customers perceived as values from themselves. It wasn't from a product as a material machine, it wasn’t the performance. It was "How does it make you feel?"
Coleman: In our little Miata bubble, the NC was way too big and heavy. So the idea that [the ND] should be like the NA coalesced pretty naturally. Yamamoto didn’t ask. He said, “This is what we’re thinking, we want to go to the NA.” And it was, “Yeah that’s exactly what we’re thinking, too.” So it was a very short, simple discussion.
Yamamoto: What did the NA offer these people? It’s to have an amazing fun time in the car, it’s such a simple concept, but that was the concept, that’s what it was. That’s why the concept for the ND was “Joy of the moment, joy of life.”
While Mazda fought against the trends of the time, aiming to build a smaller, simpler roadster, it wasn’t hard to rally employees around the concept.
Coleman: The personality of the Miata and the value of that personality has to the company is so deeply understood at Mazda. Not only does everybody there love the car, but it's a self-feeding mechanism that has become the recruiting tool that brings people to Mazda.
Saward: There was a real pride in what the engineers in Japan accomplished on the NA and I think they felt like, "OK, let's do that again." So there was clearly a driven approach to getting the car as small as possible. And yet, understanding all the challenges we have with regulations and airbags and everything that we never really had to deal with on the earlier cars.
Shigeki Saito (Current Program Manager, Mazda Miata): I’ve been involved in all four Miatas. We never sought to build a larger vehicle, one with more power. The result is that people around the world love this car.
II. "Let Camaros and Mustangs Do Their Thing"
Like many automakers, Mazda operates multiple design studios around the globe. Mazda has design teams at its global headquarters in Hiroshima, Yokohama, Southern California, and Germany. The design of the ND was informed by passionate debate between the Japanese and American studios.
Masashi Nakayama (Chief Designer, Mazda): From our perspective, we wanted the Miata to get back to the original philosophy. But when it came to the U.S. team’s perspective, they wanted to have a sports car that could sell a lot of volume.
Derek Jenkins (Former head of design, Mazda North American Operations; current SVP of Design and Brand, Lucid Motors): At the time, we were looking at things like the Z4, the F-Type, these cars are a little more serious. But then when you do that, it's like, "Well, can we go up to a 19-inch wheel?" Japan responded, "No, we cannot. All of that just adds weight." And they were dead right. It’s that whole Jinba-Ittai, horse and rider as one thing, we’re going to keep it like a delicate instrument. Let Camaros and Mustangs and BMWs do their thing.
Nakayama: It comes down to, which is more difficult to do? Making a small, light car or making a large, heavy car? Making a small, light car is actually more difficult, but if you’re able to succeed in doing that, you’re able to stand out from the crowd.
Still, the U.S. team had an important impact on the ND’s design. They wanted a car that looked a bit more masculine, whereas the Japanese team was working on a modern take on the NA. The U.S. team won over their colleagues.
Jenkins: In Irvine, where the Mazda North America headquarters is, that was where the first cars and coffee started in California… we’d do these cars and coffees and we’d get there and there’d be no Miatas anywhere. There’d be Mustangs and Camaros and 911s, M3s and freaking Lotus Elises. Cool cars, modern performance enthusiast cars? No freaking Miatas.
At the time, NA, NB, NC all had this reputation of kind of being a hairdresser’s car, or a hardcore track guy. It was one or the other. But the image of the car was not one of street respect.
Coleman: That was just completely obvious to us. We take that abuse every time we drive the car. And the Japanese design team just did not understand that… We had actually taken them to some Miata meets and pointedly asked Miata owners, “Hey, does anybody make fun of your car?” “Well, yeah, everybody!” And then just that blew their mind. They had no idea.
Jenkins: We would go to cars and coffee, bring the marketing team, and we’d interview people. It was like “Hey, cool M3. Can I ask you, I'm from Mazda, we're doing a research project, can I ask you how you view the Mazda Miata? Why do you think there's not more Miatas here?” And we’d get really honest answers from people. It was exactly what we feared.
We did a 10-minute edit of this and we played it in Japan. They took it really personally.
Saward: That's what we diverted from what the Japanese were doing. They really were committed to “Let's redo the first-gen car, but in a more modern way with more modern surfaces.”
Jenkins: We were like, “No. Give the car more motion. Give the car a more grounded look and feel. Stance the car”... That became the approach to try to make the car look visually more like what it's capable of doing.
Jenkins: In the end, there was alignment…I’m super proud of that project.
Yamamoto: The car has been out already for ten years, but I see no flaw with the design. It's a beautiful design that's really stood the test of time.
III. The Gram Strategy
During the car’s development, Mazda engineers obsessed over saving weight wherever possible. They devised what they called the “gram strategy,” where anywhere they could reasonably save even a gram of weight, they would. The idea is that all those grams would add up to kilograms.
Yamamoto: The biggest challenge for us was to make the vehicle as small as possible and as light as possible. That was a huge, huge challenge for development. The NA clocked in at 940 kilograms in its lightweight trim, the NB flared up to 1,030 kilograms, then the NC went up to 1,110 kilograms. When we started development we said, “Ok, we’re not going to get to 940 kilograms because that’s pretty ambitious, but let’s keep it under one ton.”
Nakayama: If you drive a car that weighs 1,000 kg and one that weighs 1,110 kg, you can immediately tell the difference. We believed it was crucial to get below 1,000 kg.
Saito: I think that the very principle, the bottom line of the ND is lightweight.
Keith Tanner (Development engineer and co-owner, Flyin’ Miata): One of the things we did find when we started tearing the car apart was just how optimized for weight efficiency the whole thing is.
Yamamoto: When we talk about one gram, the Japanese ¥1 coin is one gram exactly… In a vehicle, there are over 5,000 plus components and accessories that make up the vehicle. So let's trim 1 gram of fat from each piece, each component. That was the strategy.
There are countless examples of the gram strategy applied throughout the ND. The base of the windshield has holes drilled where no one can see them; the tailpipes lack decorative finishers and instead are polished to a shine; the transmission casing is smooth; the rearview mirror housing was shaved thinner; there’s no cover on the battery; the wheels have four rather than five lugs. Yamamoto recalls one fun example in the form of the seat-adjustment handle.
Yamamoto: Up until then, all Mazdas used something we refer to as a “towel bar,” the bar that goes along the side of the frame, and that's for ease of use. From the gram strategy, this is completely unnecessary, and so another way we saved weight was changing from a towel bar to a very thin lever with the assumption that it's your own car that you love, so you’ll get used to it right away.
Coleman: I remember him calling me and asking, “We're gonna do it just on one side. Should it be on the right or the left?” I'm really glad he called me because they were gonna put on the right. And I'm like, “You gotta put it on the left.” Because when I get in the car, I’ve got to move the seat back, and I can’t reach the one on the right from outside the car.
Nakayama: I remember an interesting episode from a review of all the components. There was a guy, an HVAC engineer, who had a presentation there. His job is to make the cabin cold and warm. But the team just said we don’t need that kind of an A/C function in the Miata. This engineer looked so sad. I remember his facial expression to this day.
He said that he joined Mazda because he wanted to make the world's best car. But now, he was told that we didn’t require this A/C function… During that review, the top R&D guy told him, “You have to make the lightest, most compact HVAC system." Hearing that comment, the engineer’s eyes started to shine. We’ve got tons of these stories.
IV. "In Japan, We Don’t Drive As Quickly"
The Japanese and U.S. teams didn’t just have a strong debate over design. There was a lot of back and forth about the ND’s engine.
Coleman: Very often, everyone will coalesce around a car, an image that they think is the right direction. But what you'll find is people are looking at different elements of that car. When you think you're talking about the same thing, you’re not.
Yamamoto: At first, I wanted only to have a 1.5-liter engine. You know, it’s a very small engine, but that’s what I wanted for the U.S. market. For many different reasons, we ended up putting the 2.0-liter in, but I wanted to dispel the notion that a 1.5-liter wouldn’t be fun.
Saito: I believe that the Miata doesn’t require power because its value is that it’s a car that one can drive very casually around their home, and it’s still very fun to drive.
Coleman: When he wanted to go after the purity and simplicity of the NA, part of that was going back to being just a 1.5-liter engine. And that’s great, but we can’t literally go back to an NA, because if you drive an NA now, it’s hilariously slow. I mean, it's still fun to drive, but no one's gonna pay $30,000 for a brand new car and then have it be that slow, right?
Saito: When we think of the American and European markets, the customers drive a lot faster. So we need performance to support that environment, so that’s why we implemented a 2.0-liter for America and Europe. But in Japan, as you know, we don’t drive cars as quickly.
Coleman: I think a natural, understandable assumption from the Japanese point of view is that all Americans just want Corvettes… Really, we’re trying to sort of establish what is the progression of power that's appropriate that keeps this thing the same rather than keeping it having it snowball into it being a different car.
Yamamoto-san eventually acquiesced. Mazda added a 2.0-liter option, but the decision came late in development.
Coleman: Because [the ND] stuck with the 1.5 so deep into development, the structure was locked into being very small and very light, and then we force fed the 2.0-liter into there. Which is the best way to do it, because if we'd left all the clearances big and all the room for the 2.0-liter, making everything easy, the car would’ve been bigger and heavier, which is exactly what [Yamamoto] didn’t want to do.
Yamamoto is smart enough. I think he knew all along that’s what he was doing.
Mazda’s 1.5-liter four-cylinder was heavily reworked for the ND Miata. But because the decision to add the 2.0-liter came so late in development, there weren’t many changes made from its application in other Mazda models. A facelift for the 2019 model year provided an opportunity to upgrade the 2.0.
Coleman: Everything we had seen until the car showed up was that they were making changes to extend the redline. No mention whatsoever of gaining 25 horsepower. That was irrelevant.
The previous 2.0-liter made 155 hp and 148 pound-feet of torque and revved to 6,500 rpm. The updated 2.0-liter for the “ND2” makes 181 hp and 151 pound-feet of torque and revs to 7,500 rpm.
V. "Back Roads Are Always In Bad Condition"
Another example of the Miata charting its own path is in the suspension. While modern sports cars became increasingly stiff in search of marginal performance gains, the Miata has remained steadfastly soft.
Saito: In general, a lot of sports cars are focused on driving at the limit. They seek speed, and therefore have very hard suspension. But our development is focusing on real-world driving. Our taste is for a rather soft chassis, very good ride comfort, long-wheel travel.
Yamamoto: The tendency is to minimize the roll, to have harder, stiffer suspension so that you can have a quick, nimble response, and I totally understand that.
Coleman: The place this car has to be enjoyable is on back roads. And back roads are always in bad condition because if they had enough traffic on them that they were worth repaving, then they'd have too much traffic, and they wouldn’t be any fun.
I spend a lot of time on the back roads here in California, and they're all falling apart. They're bumpy and they're undulating and you have to make the car soft to handle that. At the same time, as we're trying to keep the car as light as possible and it's missing the main structural element, which is over your head, the body stiffness is not going to be that high. So you’re sort of boxed in where we need to have the car move and be supple over these bumpy roads, and if we make the suspension too stiff, we start shaking the body structure too.
Yamamoto: The reason why we kept the ND soft was so that everybody can enjoy the same kind of feeling and they can maximize contact patch and traction under any circumstances. With this roll, they can actually feel the movement in the car and enjoy it and really relish in the weight transfer.
Tanner: Once we started measuring the suspension travel, we realized just how much there was, and that gives us the ability to let the suspension move more than you might on something like NA, which is fairly restricted in rear travel. It allows us to come up with a very good ride-handling compromise on the car just to let the suspension absorb what is going on.
Unlike with the engine, the chassis hasn’t changed much over the ND Miata’s life. The biggest changes came in the form of Kinematic Posture Control (KPC) which reduces body roll slightly by braking an inside rear wheel during cornering, and an asymmetric limited-slip differential for the ND3. It also got a new steering rack calibration.
Coleman: It looks like we’re not playing with the springs and dampers and sway bars. The fact is we have done a bunch of other attempts to retune the suspension, and none of them are ever better than what we have now.
Saito: The asymmetric LSD, and also the Kinematic Posture Control, these are great technologies that support the character of the Miata.
Coleman: You know, we'll say Jinba-Ittai until we're blue in the face, but that is the core difference is that's our target, this feeling of being connected to the car rather than “Oh, we want to make the yaw response 10% better or we want the body roll to be this much less,” right?
VI. What An MX-5 Must Be
The ND Miata launched on September 3, 2014 with concurrent events around the globe. In the intervening years, Mazda has sold 270,084 units as of July 2024, and the car has remained a critical darling. A new Miata is on its way, though Mazda hasn’t announced a timeline. It will be electrified in some capacity. Ten years on, the creators of the ND reflect on its legacy.
Coleman: The reaction to the car has perfectly matched what we hoped it would be. The fact that people love it, but also specifically the way they love it, what they love about it has reinforced that we were on the right track.
Saito: We have been consistent with our philosophy from the beginning of the Miata to the latest one. The direction and concept, we have not changed those things, and we are not going to change for the future.
Nakayama: I think it's sort of a miracle, the ND Miata, and there are so many people behind the scenes who really worked, aligning their aspirations. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but all those unsung heroes, those behind the scenes, were aligned on their aspirations. That’s the story I want people to understand about this ND Miata.
Yamamoto: It's been 100 years since the vehicle was invented and ever since then, it's continued to advance. But, the primitive instinct of driving a car, having fun, hasn't changed at all. Being able to embrace the fact that humans haven't changed, in a good way, we were able to really focus on the human-centric part of the vehicle. How does it affect you? How does it move you? In being able to embrace that, we were able to reaffirm the fact that our development was not in the wrong direction and that it allowed us to stay focused and unwavering in our purpose.
Gallery: ND MX-5 Miata Oral History
