Thirty-five candles on the cake for the best-selling spider in the world. It was in fact 1989 when the Mazda MX-5 was presented for the first time at the Chicago Motor Show, arriving on the market with the Eunos name and then being renamed in America as the Miata. Initially equipped with a 115 HP 1.6 DOHC 4-cylinder coupled to a 5-speed manual gearbox, given the success achieved it soon had to enrich the range with a 131 HP 1.8. But let's go in order.
However, it all began much earlier, at the end of the 1970s, when over a cup of steaming coffee an American journalist named Bob Hall suggested to Mazda's Research and Development managers that they position a nice spider in the range. A two-seater that could be inspired by the Alfa Romeo duet brought to the big screen by Mike Nichols in The bachelor. The idea was not immediately accepted by the white-collar workers of Hiroshima: it took six or seven years before that dream was realized in a project on paper and, later, in a production car.
After Chicago's debut, sales immediately encouraged production, and slowly began to grow until the milestone of 940,000 units sold was reached in 2014; in 2016 the million barrier fell. The Mazda MX-5 currently has more than 1.2 million units sold, with North America in the lead followed by the Old Continent market. And today is the 35th birthday, to celebrate a story that still seems very far from its epilogue.
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