If you have read my story of buying my first Miata, Brian Buys A Miata, (and if you haven’t, go read it now, I’ll wait) in the second paragraph in it I mention 3 cars that I was considering buying before discovering the Miata. Now, pay attention when you get to the paragraph in here where the author says “flying solo into the then-empty affordable sports car market” because 3 of the 4 cars he mentions were the ones I also considered back in 1989.

Good Bones

By Norman Garrett III
Founder Miata Club of America
Concept Engineer Miata Project

I have a glass vial on my desk that contains a small, round clump of some brown substance. It never ceases to be a conversation starter when anyone visits my office. No, it is not the pathology lab’s yield from some recent operation. It is a clump of modeling clay used on the final Miata clay styling model. I keep it as a reminder how fluid the Miata’s shape was for three years, and how difficult it is to know when a car is “right.”

I used to love to hang out with the modelers and designers. As an engineer, they tolerated my presence because I would pour their coffee. Watching the clay take shape into a car was fascinat­ing. What looked like a perfectly good fender to me would be labeled “defec­tive” and “obnoxious” by the committee of designers. I observed closely as the slightest radius or intersection would be worried over for days until it was right.

How the light played and reflected on the surface, how it moved from door to fender to hood, all of this was critical to the designer’s goal. Did the fender look too muscular? Did the hood distract or add to the view from the driver’s seat? Did the trunk lid surface transition well into the rear quarter panels? All of these details were sweated and fretted as the designers critically looked on. I stood there like a color-blind man staring at a traffic light. I couldn’t see a tenth of what they were so worried about.

This type of surface development takes two main ingredients: Talent (which Mazda had wisely hired) and Time (some of it on the clock, most of it off). In the quiet of a one car studio at the Mazda skunk works, the Miata slowly, painfully took shape with great expenditures of both of these elements.

We would always start a clay model with an armature – a basic steel ladder frame with hubs and wheels hung off the corners at the approximate correct wheelbase and track width. From there we would bolt down plywood, and then adhere blocks of rigid foam. The last three inches or more would be applied in warm clay. The musty smell of modeling clay is earthy and romantic, full of possibilities. The entire corporate office had clay tracks leading out of the studio, it would never leave the bottom of your shoes.

Once the clay was applied, the modelers began their sculpting, directed by the designers careful eye. Usually a full size side view rendering was posted on a wall and the basic shape began from there. Translating a two dimensional airbrush drawing into a viable three dimensional object requires more than artistic skills, it requires vision.

My job came in as I digitized the surface, taking a “snapshot” of the styled surfaces. I would make body contour drawings of the model and lay it against the known “hard points.” Hard points those pesky little things that got in the designers’ way, such as the engine, the steering wheel, the rear suspension. If there was a conflict, it was negotiation time as we sorted out how much it would cost to change the hardware so the car could be that much prettier. Thanks to the packaging skills of the engineers in Japan, most of what the designers wanted was accom­plished. They were relatively free to design a short wheelbase sports car as they saw fit.

As I’ve said before, the Miata (or P729, as it was called then) had the advantage of flying solo into the then-empty affordable sports car market. The only players at that time were the origi­nal Toyota MR2 (a.k.a. “Gobot”), the Alfa Spider (long in tooth even then), the Pontiac Fiero (not bad toward the end), and if you stretched, the Honda CRX. A clean sheet of paper was avail­able for the Miata to appear upon, but that is not always a good thing.

Blazing new trails in the automotive marketplace is a risky proposition at best. Look at the Pacer, the GM APV van, the del Sol. Since we were recreating the affordable sports car, some cues were available from the history of that market. No specific styling feature was “lifted” from the museum of great sports cars, but a trend could be seen if you mixed them all together.

The balanced proportions of an MGB, the sexiness of a Jag E-type, the lightness of a Lotus Elan (styled by an engineer, I might add), all gave some guiding lights to follow. We had the common goal of making the Miata “classic” in its styling, to produce a car that might look two years old when it was first introduced, but would still look current five years later.

This all came back to me as I study the new sports cars just now coming out on the market. The new MGF is more of a second generation MR2 or del Sol sort of car, the Fiat Barchetta looks like an Italian Miata (not a bad thing), and the BMW Z3 looks like a nice little sports car made out of sedan components, chunky and funky. Seeing these cars made me appreciate how well the Miata turned out – it still looks fresh and balanced in comparison to the new offerings. Even now, after six years on the road, the Miata stands as a “finished” design to me. Modern yet classic, tight and controlled where it needs to be, fluid where it looks best.

Standing in the studio twelve years ago, I wondered why the designers kept moving a tenth of a millimeter of clay around all day. I used to pass it off to their artistic temperaments. Now, over a decade later, I see the strength in their ground work.

They gave our little car good bones, and the beauty still shines through.