Tom Matano was a little shocked when he first visited Mazda’s design studio in Hiroshima. He joined the company in 1983 to head up the California design studio at the newly formed Mazda Research of America (MRA). At the time, his colleagues in Japan were working on the second-generation FC RX-7 and the studio might as well have been a shrine to the Porsche 944, with posters, magazines, and an actual car parked inside.
