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The spirit of these 7 weird Mazdas lives on in today's cars

HIROSHIMA, Japan — When visiting the Mazda Museum in Hiroshima, housed amidst the company's main manufacturing site on the shore of the Enko River, you can follow Jujiro Matsuda's early 20th century entrepreneurial path from artificial cork manufacturer to machine and machine toolmaker, to motor vehicle producer. But probe a bit deeper into the exhibits, and you can uncover more than just a chronicle of corporate achievements: delightfully weird outliers, paragons of oddball design, engineering and marketing solutions It's looking at these delightful misfits that really illustrates Mazda's tale. You can also see precisely how many of these vintage conveyances led directly (or indirectly, or obtusely) to Mazda's most iconic American-market cars and trucks. Our seven favorite precursors, and their lovable successors, are listed below. 1931 Type TCS/Mazda B-Series Mazda's first vehicle was this little three-wheeler, powered by an air-cooled, one-cylinder motor. Because the company lacked a distribution network at the time, the trucklet was marketed by Mitsubishi; hence the three-diamond pattern on its side. All of this is very reminiscent of the company's eventual foray into the U.S. market, where its sales were spearheaded by compact pickups. The B-Series, which was one of the first Mazda vehicles available in the U.S., arrived in 1972, and stuck around through the first decade of the 21st century. Like its partnership with Mitsubishi, Mazda teamed up with stakeholder Ford to market this little truck as Ford's first small pickup, the Courier, the precursor to the Ranger. There was even a rotary-powered B-Series for a few years, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. 1968 Bongo Van/Mazda5 The Bongo allegedly was the first one-box van design in Japan, and apparently it was so popular that the name Bongo became, for a period of time, the generic metonym for the category—the way that Kleenex is a stand-in for all facial tissue. With a tiny rear-mounted engine and a planar expanse of metal to push around, it was not particularly fast, but it was both spacious and innovative. The same could be said of the brand's mini-minivan, the Mazda5, which was available for a couple of generations in the States in the Aughties. Sadly, the name 5 never caught on as a synonym for fun-to-drive family hauler, at least not yet, and the category itself (like nearly every other car category) was crushed in America by the rise of the crossover.

Mazda plans a new crossover for 2021

If Mazda is going to increase sales, it's going to need more crossovers. According to company CEO Masamichi Kogai, a new crossover that won't cannibalize sales of the CX-3, CX-5, and CX-9 is coming in 2021, to be built at the new U.S. factory Mazda is building in partnership with Toyota. The plant will be able to build 150,000 vehicles per year, and that full capacity will be reserved for the new CUV. With 112,235 units sold, Mazda's best-selling vehicle in the United States last year was, not surprisingly, the CX-5. With that in mind, it seems a safe bet that the new crossover will be a replacement for the discontinued CX-7 to slot above the CX-5 and below the CX-9. Kogai told Automotive News that the vehicle will be designed for America and built exclusively in the States. "We are actually going to introduce a totally new and different type of SUV," said Kogai. We don't know exactly what that means, but we hope the new model line follows Mazda's tradition of crossovers that are more fun to drive than their main competitors. Related Video:

Confirmed: Mazda Miata gets more power, higher redline, telescoping wheel

Our friend over at Road & Track, Bozi Tatarevic, has a keen nose for stuff just like today's Miata news, and he spotted an article by the Japanese car magazine Car Watch that details Mazda's upcoming updates. Car Watch actually got to drive the car, too. There's a lot to go through, but the highlight has to be confirmation of what we told you earlier this year about a significant power bump: The Miata will indeed get an increase of 26 horsepower, from 155 to 181. But the power's not the whole story. Mazda has increased the redline from 6,800 RPM to 7,500. It's not clear at this point where torque and power peaks are in the rev range, or how these changes affect low-speed drivability, but more revs are almost always a good thing and aren't likely to detract from the roadster's fundamental goodness. Car Watch reports that lighter pistons and connecting rods are fitted to help reduce rotational mass in the 2.0-liter inline-four. Some valvetrain changes were needed to support the higher redline, mainly stiffer valvesprings to prevent valve float. Mazda also changed the shape of the valves and optimized the intake ports to breathe better at higher RPM. The inner diameter of the exhaust ports were increased to flow better through a new muffler better tuned to the engine's new operating range. This confirms and gives a little more detail to what we reported earlier based on a leaked document from Mazda Canada. Car Watch also confirms that the revised Miata will get a low-inertia dual-mass flywheel, which should help absorb some vibration, noise and harshness from the higher-revving engine without losing too much of the directness that a single-mass flywheel provides. Mazda usually gets stuff like this right, so while we won't know until we get a chance to drive it whether the DMF feels "right," we're not too worried about it. There's also a telescopic steering wheel, a first in any Miata, which has a range of about 1.1 inches. That doesn't sound like much, but it should help folks with longer legs reach the wheel without having to crank the seat forward. Interestingly, Car Watch reports that the telescoping wheel was opposed by some in the company seeking to save every fraction of an ounce of weight, and to get it through, the company apparently had to change some of the material in the upper steering column from steel to aluminum to satisfy the weight-conscious. Little details like these are fantastic.