Lotus Elan and Mazda MX-5 Video

[11Budlite]

I thought this was an interesting video.

 

 

That Elan looks familiar...that's not your old car is it Morgan?

Edited August 10, 2012 by 11Budlite

[Croc]

Top video find Bruce! :cooldude:

 

I now want to go out and buy an Elan! She looked lovely - far nicer than the Miata (oops...did I day that?)

[11Budlite]

She looked lovely - far nicer than the Miata (oops...did I day that?)

 

I agree Mike, especially the most recent NC version of the Miata.

[Guest Terry]

Excellent video

[Kitcat]

"Emotion over numbers", makes sense to me. And based on that, give me the Elan-that is one ugly Miata.

[turboeric]

"Emotion over numbers", makes sense to me. And based on that, give me the Elan-that is one ugly Miata.

It's unfortunate that they chose the NC (3rd gen MX5) to compare, as the NA (the original Miata) is far, far more relevant to the Elan. Compared to the current MX5, the original Miata is much smaller, lighter, more agile. Also more cramped and noisier. The Miatas have suffered the same fate as so many others - people wanted bigger, comfier, quiter, more power, and Mazda gave it to them. The original 1990 1.6 litre Miata was as close to an Elan as then-current crash regulations would allow.

[MHKflyer52]

"Emotion over numbers", makes sense to me. And based on that, give me the Elan-that is one ugly Miata.

 

Not the color combination I would chose for sure for a Miata no mater what model.

 

It's unfortunate that they chose the NC (3rd gen MX5) to compare, as the NA (the original Miata) is far, far more relevant to the Elan. Compared to the current MX5, the original Miata is much smaller, lighter, more agile. Also more cramped and noisier. The Miatas have suffered the same fate as so many others - people wanted bigger, comfier, quiter, more power, and Mazda gave it to them. The original 1990 1.6 litre Miata was as close to an Elan as then-current crash regulations would allow.

 

I do agree as I own a NA (1996 1.8 liter) and considered buying a new NC but after test driving the NC I felt that it was not as fun to drive as the NA mainly due to the car having a lot more creature comforts and it just felt like it did not have the same driving feel for me at least.

[rnr]

That is Mophos car which now belongs to a Bay Area GGLC member

[Off Road SHO]

That is Mophos car which now belongs to a Bay Area GGLC member

 

The Elan or the Miata?

 

Is that a Roots style blower on the Miata? If so, I wonder what the torque curve looks like. I don't really use total HP in my driving, but the area under the torque curve is what I want to see. If it came into some nice torque at around 2200 and didn't drop off till 7,000, that would make for some nice driving at long tracks; not as much shifting.

 

Tom

[rnr]

The Elan - it is an excellent example of one and the new owner regularly brings it to our autocrosses.

 

I believe the Miata is a showcar from SEMA

[MoPho]

Yes, that is my old Elan. It is pretty far from stock though, it has a lot of engine modifications and has had suspension upgrades as well, so performance wise it is closer to this Miata Super 20 show car.

Sam had contacted me a couple of months ago and I put him in touch with the new owner. Sam, who is based in Chicago, also owns an Elan.

[JohnCh]

Here's more info on the supercharger including link to a dyno sheet: http://www.flyinmiata.com/index.php?deptid=5683&parentid=0&stocknumber=03-90010

 

My understanding is that Cosworth initially developed this, but there were teething problems that Flyin Miata worked through when they took over the project. The Miata NC uses a 2.0L Duratec, so this is an option for those running that engine in their se7en.

 

I love Elans and almost bought one before getting a Westfield, but finally decided it was just too damn civilized I'm glad the video captured the amazing exhaust and intake sounds of this particular example. Just fantastic.

 

-John

[Mondo]

I always think of the Miata as an Elan that's reliable;)

[Alaskossie]

I have always thought that, despite the Mazda hype, the original Miata was a lot closer in concept to an even older car than the Lotus Elan -- the Alfa Giulietta. Both the Miata and the Alfa had creature comforts (wind-up windows, for example), a sensible folding top, a steel body, etc.

 

Their differences included live axle vs. independent rear suspension, and drum brakes vs. discs. But these could be attributed, to some extent, to the era in which each was conceived, and not to a fundamental difference in engineering or design philosophy.

[MoPho]

Actually, the product planner on the Miata project is adamant that the car wasn't based on the Elan despite all the similarities and the fact that they had one on hand during the creation of the car. He claims the styling is based more on the Ferrari 275 Daytona.

I don't believe him

 

BTW, the Elan has a folding top and electric roll up windows

[Sean]

He claims the styling is based more on the Ferrari 275 Daytona.

 

Did you mean the 365 GTB/4 (a.k.a. "Daytona"), or the 275 GTB, GTB/4, GTS, etc.?

[MoPho]

Did you mean the 365 GTB/4 (a.k.a. "Daytona"), or the 275 GTB, GTB/4, GTS, etc.?

 

I believe it was the Ferrari 90210

 

Probably the 365, too many numbers.... :banghead:

[Sean]

I didn't mean to come across as pedantic MoPho, but until your post, I never thought about the 275 GTB and the MX-5 as similar, but now I think there may be some resemblance between the two when viewed from the front. I'm not seeing any Daytona at all though, from any angle.

[MoPho]

This is the story according to Bob Hall (the "father" of the Miata)

 

While I really don't like tooting my own horn, I'll take full credit, or I think I should say blame, for the many 'legends' regarding the long-held concept that the Miata was a shameless cribbing of the Elan, 'proof' (to some) that the Japanese have never had an original idea. The sole reason that anyone ever saw shots of an S3 Elan with the clay models of the Miata come from my own personal greed. Here's what happened.

 

The head of the Product Planning group in Irvine, a wonderful gentleman named Kenichiro Toda, came to me with a worried look in his face and some budgetary documents. Essentially what he was worried about was the fact we hadn't used up enough of the budget Mazda had allocated for competitive vehicles for that fiscal year (1983-1984). Normally you'd say 'so what?', but in this case there were problems. We were budgeted on a 'Use it or lose it' basis. Because of the cyclical character of car product cycles, we had a year which required few competitive vehicles to be evaluated against prototypes or to provide benchmarks for upcoming programs. The bad part was that the following year we had a couple of prototypes coming over as well as a project we'd need a benchmark car for. So we had to use all or most of the budget allocated. We had about $15,000 left unspent.

 

I couldn't think of a single car that we needed to buy for any upcoming project, till Toda-san said 'what about something for the lightweight sports car project?'. This caught me totally unaware, since the project was still nowhere near approval. He explained he was indeed serious, so I sat down and gave it a thought. The next day I asked him if the car would be handled as a normal company car would be, and if it would be ok to buy a used car. When he explained that a used car would be fine and that it would be sold as an ex-company car after the depreciation period (about two years back then), and that we should 'just buy anything, and buy it before the end of the financial year'.

 

Now, a brief digression. I was a huge fan of 'The Avengers', and like many adolescent males of my generation I was hopelessly enamoured by Diana Rig's character of Mrs. Emma Peel. And not only because she drove a Lotus Elan. But I liked the Elan too. And I had lusted after Mr's Peel's pale metallic blue Elan S3 that appeared in the second series of Mrs. Peel's episodes. Almost as much Mrs. Peel, in fact.

 

So after a call to Dave Bean, the West Coast's Lotus guru (based in Santa Barbara, California in those days), I raised the idea of buying a Lotus Elan. Much to my surprise, Toda-san gave the whole thing the ok, adding if used the Elan as my company car it would keep our competitive vehicle fleet budget up while freeing up the lease costs of a departmental company car.

 

A quick trip to the guys in accounting and numbers-cruncher Tim mentioned that I could buy the car after two years for something like $4500. So I'd have the Elan as a company car for two years, then get it at a significant savings. A call back to Mr. Bean in Santa Barbara and gave him an idea of what we wanted (1967 Elan S3 drophead coupe in silver blue metallic with a black interior, a new galvanized chassis and universals in place of the rubber doughnuts), sent him a check as a deposit and waited.

 

About six weeks later, I drove up to Santa Barbara to pick the car up from Bean's. I was the happy driver of a company-owned 'new' Elan S3. It even had California license SJH 498D (Mrs. Peel's original number - SJH 499D had already been taken).

 

Much to our surprise the lightweight sports car program was placed into 'off-line' status, so the timing of this acquisition was near faultless. We used it for a couple of videos we sent to Japan (it was the only 2-seat open sports car Mazda owned in the 'States at that time, though a Spitfire was purchased later on) as well as a study into backbone chassis for the lightweight sports car, a layout I favoured if only because we could put a new body right on top of the chassis.

 

Later in 1984 (when it was decided to take the lightweight sports car project to an even more official level), Japan - lacking any sort of open two-seat cars there at Mazda HQ - asked for us to ship the car to them. Now even though 'my' master plan had me driving this Elan for the rest of my life, my bosses wanted the car! What could I do? Well, in a word, nothing. In a couple of weeks our shipping agents, Harper Robinson, had made all the arrangements and a truck appeared with a 20 foot container. I nearly shed a tear when 'my' Elan was packed up in the container and shipped off to an unknown fate in Japan. And I went back into my 323 company car which had been nicknamed 'the beige bucket' by Mark Jordan. Sniff!

 

Nine years later, on one of my last trips to Japan as a Mazda employee, a co-worker there discretely took me aside after a meeting, whisking me to a garage between the design center in Hiroshima and the river. Flicking the lights on I saw 'my' Elan sitting there on low tyres, dusty and with a pretty big gouge on the bonnet but otherwise looking fine. He mentioned the car was taken out to the Miyoshi proving ground three times when it first arrived in 1984. In early 1985 it did a stint in engineering while it was investigated to see just how small the still not approved lightweight sports car could be and meet the gauntlet of corporate and governmental design rules. It went back into the garage afterwards and there it stayed. It might still be there for all I know.

 

Now the details. One of the original documents I prepared described the Mazda lightweight sports car as 'an MGB that will start on a rainy day and won't leak oil on your driveway'. The position of the car in the marketplace was much more in the area inhabited by the likes of MGB and Sunbeam Alpine, particularly in terms of afforability (based on weekly wages Vs car cost, not the direct dollar amount) and size. The Elan was a smaller (too small to meet even basic criteria like Mazda's toe working space requirements), appreciably more expensive vehicle. Yes, as you know the car with the 1.6 litre engine, twin cams and independent rear suspension there are Elan similarities. But only the 1.6 litre engine was part of the specs going in. The original engine was a 1.6 single cam, though this was altered later to a 1.6 single came 3-valver, and later yet again to the 1.6 twincam we know. The car also started out riding on strut front suspension and with a rigid rear axle hung on five-link geometry with coils.

 

Design-wise, the original studies for the car (the ones which set the tone) were done by Mark Jordan and if anything they had more of the feel of a shrunken Ferrari 275 NART Spider than Lotus. This is sort of to be expected, since Mark was a Ferrari fan (a trait inherited from hie Father who owned a few of 'em) who didn't give a toss about Lotus. Or the Avengers.

 

Early studies had a nose intake very much like a Ferrari 275 GTB or NART Spider, but as we entered the feasibility stage, we learned that the nose wouldn't work with US bumper regs. So the layout could be altered to put a bar across the grille opening (which looked like a tongue) or we could lower or raise the air intake. Raising it looked like hell, so it was dropped below the bumper striker bar. Add this fact to the requirement which came from above that the car would have pop-up lamps, and requirements/dictates were making the car more reminiscent of the Elan than anyone intended or wanted.

 

As we got into the project and started using a little lateral thinking, the other bits fell into place. Norman Garrett proposed the first independent rear idea, using all the bits from the rear of the old 4 wheel-drive turbo 323 GTX, including the tall rear struts. Japan eyeballed that and tried seeing if they couldn't do something better and stay within budget. They did.

 

The twincam engine came about as a result of Japan going DOHC mad on 323-class cars, so with that sort of generous sales volume, the twincam engine became economically feasible. So despite what you might have heard or believed, similarities with the Elan are more coincidental than planned.

 

I bet you're sorry you asked now, eh?

 

bwob

[Alaskossie]

Morgan,

 

What a great tale -- a glimpse into what goes on in project planning, evaluation and development inside a major auto maker -- the seemingly-innocuous activities that improbably resulted in one of the greatest automotive niche-filling success stories of all time.

 

Thanks for passing it on.