At the Automobile Council near Tokyo on Friday, the only auto show to be staged in Japan since the pandemic struck, Mazda surprised the 3,000 invited guests and media with the world premiere of a gasoline-hybrid version of its soon-to-be-launched MX-30 pure electric SUV. Up until yesterday, as far as anyone knew, the MX-30 crossover which debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show last November, was going to be a dedicated EV. Now it has a hybrid brother.
Equipped with the same hybrid “e-Skyactiv G” soft gasoline formula of 2.0 liters and 2.0 cylinders and 2.0 liters used in the Mazda3, the MX-30 with all-wheel drive will go on sale until the end of the year. Instead, Mazda says it will start taking orders to lease the fully electric MX-30 edition until the end of 2020, with deliveries starting in early 2021. With suicide doors, such as those used in the RX-8 rotary engine, the MX-30 is a debatable taste that carries the crossover in another direction from Mazda’s acclaimed Kodo design. Written in this design philosophy, the Mazda3 won the 2020 World Car Design of the Year, while the MX-5 won the same trophy in 2016.
The increase in coronavirus cases in Japan has worried organizers of nervous occasions that they feared that the Auto Council could be cancelled altogether, as it had been postponed twice. With the infections reaching more than 1,500 instances on Friday, the Japanese government revived the concept of enforcing a state of emergency. However, in accordance with current non-emergency government rules, all visitors should wear a mask and move away socially, while the occasion staff took the frame temperature at the front of the site and recorded visitors’ names and phone numbers in a prospective tracking protocol.
Mazda’s head of design, Ikuo Maeda, who was at the Makuhari Messe complex to oversee the firm’s special 100th birthday display said, “It was touch and go there for a while with another potential event postponement on the cards, but we are ecstatic to finally be able to reveal the hybrid MX-30 in amongst our collection of historical cars celebrating the firm’s centenary.” In the biggest stand at the event, Mazda also displayed its Green Panel tricycle from 1936, the tiny R360 two-door passenger car from 1960, the 1963 Familia 800 Van, the Luce 1500, the MX-5, as well as the rotary-powered 1967 Cosmo Sport, RX-7 and RX-5.
The Automobile Council’s catchphrase “classic meets modern” says it all. Now in its fifth year, the event combines components of typical car shows, at which new cars are revealed, with those of classic car collections at which heritage vehicles are displayed and paid homage. In addition to the Mazda MX-30 hybrid reveal, McLaren also held their Japan debut of the 620R road car of which only 350 units will be built.
For 2020, the event’s theme of “The Beauty of 1960’s Le Mans Cars” was aptly illustrated with the display of a 1963 Alpine M63 and a 1966 Iso Grifo A3. Dozens of other classic road and race cars were also on display including a 1956 Corvette, a Ferrari 308GTB, a 1936 MG TA Q-Type, a 1967 Lotus Elan, as well as a variety of Citroens, Porsches and Mercedes Benz classic cars.
The Automobile Council will allow a maximum number of 5,000 visitors per day and run until August 2.
In a career that spans 30 years, I have written about automobiles, innovation, games, luxury lifestyles, travel and food. Based in Tokyo since 1988, I was in the front
For 30 years of experience in the automotive sector, I have written about automotive, innovation, games, luxury lifestyles and gastronomy. Based in Tokyo since 1988, it was in the front row to tell stories about Japan’s Golden Year in 1989, when local automakers featured legends such as the Mazda MX-5, Nissan Skyline GT-R, Subaru Legacy, Toyota MR2, Nissan 300ZX, Mazda. RX-7, then opened the first Lexus and Infiniti showrooms in the United States. I hosted a global television exhibition on automotive culture called Samurai Wheels in Japan, won a Japanese oratory contest, co-piloted a Lexus V8 on 24 Nurburgring Race with Gran Turismo author Kazunori Yamauchi, finished fourth in a team I created with former driving force F1 Ukyo Katayama to co-drive an MX-5 race car in Mazda’s annual 4-hour race , drove a first-generation Porsche 911 up to The Hill in Goodwood, drove Jeremy Clarkson’s leading car in his “GT-R vs Bullet Train” race across Japan for Top Gear, co-starred in a World War II Japanese television series that played with a Japanese Russian baseball pitcher on automotive culture and sang in a men’s choir at the Vatican (but not in front of the pope). I have also scribbled everything similar to Japanese for publications such as Car and Driver, Edmunds, Top Gear, Autoautomobile, Auto Express, Quattroruote, The Sydney Morning Herald, Herald Sun, The Japan Times, GQ Japan, Japan Airlines and Forbes Japan. I am co-chair of the World Car Awards and a member of the jury of the Japanese Auto of the Year and International Engine of the Year.