In the year 2000, a small group of Mazda employees from Mazda's North American R&D studio in Irvine, CA, worked in secret to engineer and design a production-quality sport-compact car. Despite limited resources and budget, they introduced the Mazda MP3 in just 12 months (concept to Job One) - and to critical acclaim. Not only did the MP3 win over the youth-oriented sport-compact crowd, it served to open up a whole new market for Mazda, eventually giving new life to the MAZDASPEED brand in North America.
Phil Martens remembers well the day he first envisioned adding a high-performance sport-compact car to the Mazda lineup.
"It was January of 2000. I had just been appointed as the Managing Director of Product Strategy, Design, and Development for Mazda Corporation (MC) and was attending the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, where Mazda was showing the 2000 Mazda Protege. There was also this Hot Import Nights metallic red SEMA Show Protege that had been equipped with a turbocharger and aftermarket accessories," recalls Martens, who is now Ford's Group Vice President of North American Product Creation. "A group of us from Mazda R&D went to dinner that night and started talking about these cars and how the timing was right for them. We kicked around the idea of building an authentic high-performance sport-compact car, and finally, I said, 'Let's just do it.' We set a timeline of one year, and everybody committed."
One of the people dining with Martens that night was Kelvin Hiraishi, MNAO's Director of Research & Development Engineering in Irvine, CA. A die-hard sports car enthusiast who bleeds Mazda blue, no one was more excited about the prospect of a racing-tuned sport compact car than Hiraishi. "After all, I know the culture and mentality of this market, and I understood why it was so important to the brand," he says.
Martens recognized this passion, and knowing the engineering group at Mazda Headquarters wasn't interested in taking on a sport compact car, asked Hiraishi to lead the project from Irvine.
"I was shocked by the assignment," says Hiraishi. "This would be the first time any branch outside of VIC had been tasked to fully lead an engineering program and bring a product to market. Plus, it was an incredibly ambitious project for even the most experienced engineering teams, and we had no business history in lead engineering. But I also saw this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our branch to prove we could deliver.
The Little Team That Could
Approaching the task with the analytical skill of an engineer and the passion of a true enthusiast, Hiraishi set to work on identifying his in-house resources and , more importantly, the ones he lacked. This picture helped him hand-pick a project team that consisted of what he calls "the best of the best," including some key outside consultants who had long-term ties to Mazda through the racing world and knew Mazdaproducts and their DNA inside and out. Although it was a skeleton crew, they shared two common characteristics: 1) what Hiraishi calls, "The Rotary Spirit," or, "the will to never give up"; and 2) a commitment to building the best steering and handling sportcompact car on the market.
Once identified, the team set to work on a triple-accelerated schedule where every stage in the project proceeded in parallel. They planned for success by anticipating failures and making the necessary corrections ahead of key target dates. The margin for error during production was smaller than usual, and the setbacks endless, but Hiraishi and his team hedged their bets... and won.
"The whole thing was an exercise in risk taking," says Hiraishi. "Very high level, very thoroughly researched but calculated risk taking."
Schedules and deadlines aside, the team worked in the face of an even bigger challenge. Because the project had no official corporate buy-in beyond Martens, it had to be carried out in secret. This meant that everyone on the team had to fit their project work in with their normal job responsibilities, making for long workdays, seven-day work weeks, and unrelenting stress and anxiety. The hurdles were high, but so too were the stakes. Explains Hiraishi, "The market was changing and moving, and we wanted to be first. No one else was doing what we were doing."
Guided by the mantra of Mazda's winning Le Mans team of 1991 "Challenge + Risk = Reward" - the team pressed on.
made a secret presentation to the highest level of Ford and Mazda executives (Mazda Advisory Board). The idea was to have each person drive the car with the hopes of getting their approval to move it into production.
Martens describes the group's reaction to the car: "They were stunned, absolutely stunned that a little shop could produce such a fun and cool car. It definitely had the look and feel we were after. In fact, I was amazed by how good it was. I went to California five times that year to meet with the team and see how things were going, and every time I visited, it had better and better chassis dynamics, handling dynamics, and performance."
Once the execs got used to the fact they had a viable sport-compact contender on their hands, they ultimately gave their manufacturing blessing, which according to Hiraishi, is when the real work began. The car was responsible for the creation of more than 2,500 new part numbers, all of which required tes - ing. But Hiraishi and team maintained their r f rant ~ic pace, never wavering in focus.
Secrets Out
In January 2001, Mazda officially unveiled the 2001 Mazda MP3 (named for its state-of-the-art Kenwood MP3 sound system and a more subliminal message: Mazda Performance) at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show. Although production for an initial run of 1,000 units had been set to begin later in the same month, early positive media reviews of the car generated tremendous buzz and heavy demand, leading Mazda to add another 500 units to the run. Within the year, Mazda had upped the number to 1,750 units and started plans for the next-generation MP3 - the MAZDASPEED Protege.
This single car - engineered, designed, and produced in a mere 12 months by a small and relatively inexperienced group - had ushered in a new era for Mazda and given new life to the MAZDASPEED brand. it also significantly strengthened the credibility of the Mazda brand and its Zoom-Zoom spirit.
"We knew we had a success on our hands," says Hiraishi. "Bottom line, the MP3 remains the best handling front-wheel drive to ever come out of Mazda... ever. "
And it all traces back to a small group of Mazda employees who had a vision that was out-matched only by their passion.
"There's no doubt there was something magical about this project," says Martens.,"This was a group of people with a 'We're going to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen' mentality. They had so much untapped potential. All they needed was a chance to prove themselves. I'm really proud of these guys. I'm really proud of the product."
