The soul behind Mazda's Iconic SP concept car

Within the first minutes of speaking to Mazda's general manager of the design division Masashi Nakayama, it's evident that the man thinks in design terms. Once he starts explaining in detail about what he is thinking about, he reaches for pen and paper, and the lines start flowing.

"When we talk about the Kodo design language at Mazda, it's important to emphasise that it's not an end goal," Nakayama explains to CarBuyer Singapore in Mazda's private meeting room at the 2023 Japan Mobility Show.

"Kodo design, which you might know as Mazda's design philosophy that breathes a kind of organic flow into an object, isn't a goal to be met. We think of it as a 'North Star' that every generation of designers at Mazda has looked towards and this is what inspires our car designs."

He does all this while drawing out a simple graph on a sheet of paper, illustrating the idea of having a philosophy to aim towards, which is a clear demonstration of his visual thought process.

This leads into the styling of the Mazda Iconic SP concept, unveiled on the opening day of the 2023 Japan Mobility Show. In the first major auto show to be held in Japan since 2019, the week-long event at the Tokyo Big Sight venue is heavy on electric vehicle concepts but Mazda has gone against the trend by revealing that its Iconic SP concept is designed to be powered by a twin-rotary engine.

Legendarily known as the powerplant of choice in Mazda's sports cars the RX-7 and RX-8, Mazda remains the only major carmaker that still has active plans for the powerful Wankel rotary engine.

The rotary engine gained traction in the late 1960s in Japan, as like Singapore, the road tax was structured based on engine capacity and rotary engines made a lot more power with much less capacity than the usual piston engines.

The iconic Mazda Cosmo of 1967 had 110 horsepower with a rotary engine that was only 987cc, a power output that was technically impossible to match with a standard four-stroke internal combustion engine of similar capacity.

Meanwhile, the Iconic SP, with the SP part simply being short for 'sport', appears to be intentionally vague on a lot of things, for the sake of versatility in the future. It's a two-seater, but is much larger than the MX-5. It could be seen as a design study for a next-generation RX-8 coupe, but its two-seat configuration puts some doubt to that because the RX-8 was a two-plus-two seater.

Other important on-paper specs include the fact that it has a 50:50 front to rear weight distribution, can run on carbon-neutral fuel, and can be configured as an EV that's powered by the rotary engine, similar to how Nissan E-Power hybrids are currently being made. All that extra onboard hardware makes it a pretty heavy car, with a claimed weight of 1,450kg.

"The Iconic SP is a continuation of our quest for the designer's North Star," explains Nakayama, who was also the chief designer for the Mazda MX-5. To emphasise his point, he effortlessly starts doodling during the interview again. "You see, while the Kodo design philosophy may seem recent, the idea goes back to the beginning, with the Mazda Cosmo sports car in 1967. This evolved through the many generations of the RX-7 coupe, and then also encompassing the RX-8. The next logical step for this evolution you can now see here, in the form of the Iconic SP."

Nakayama explains that the Iconic SP is a design idea. A form that has been shaped to visualise the spirit and fun of driving. It's a shape that can be modified to adapt itself to different powertrains, whether full petrol power or hybrids, but whether or not it can be a full EV is up in the air.

"Up until now, I think it's obvious that there has not yet been a beautiful all-electric sports car," he says. "The need to package batteries and electric circuitry into the form makes for some compromises to what we've come to understand as a shapely, curvy sports car shape.

I wouldn't say that it's definitely not possible, but with present technology, an electric version based on the Iconic SP silhouette is unlikely."

It's a head-turning design that has many iconic cues from Mazda's signature sports cars. One small but big design feature is that the Iconic SP has pop-up headlight units. A design feature that used to be found in every 1980s sports car until pedestrian safety standards made them extinct, it's being re-introduced here as low-profile items that do not stick out too high.

On whether or not it will eventually see use on a future series production Mazda, Nakayama notes, "We hope that there will be favourable feedback from car buyers, and that we can make them in a way that will pass safety standards worldwide."

Continuing his sketch, Nakayama illustrates another little known point about Mazda's sports coupes: They have always featured smooth transitions over the roof to the rear window. He points to how the Iconic SP concept effortlessly continues this design feature.

It is achieved because the roof does not have a weld and joining point in it, while most other coupe body styles have sheet metal joined together just ahead of the rear window and then the joint ground down with a grinding tool during assembly.

Mazda's sports cars however are built with the roof and B-pillar segment as one unit and no joining is necessary along the top.

Yet for now the Iconic SP, from its interior of sustainable, recycled fibres to the video camera wing mirrors and RX-7 inspired pop-up headlights, is here to show us that Mazda's engineers still know that drivers out there love the thrill of driving and it's not just about practical mobility.

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This article was first published in CarBuyer.