Miata Patterened After the Elan??

[TimMullen]

I remember a recent comment on the list about the Miata being copied from
the Elan. This is a copy of a message that was recently posted on the
Miata Forum by Bob Hall (who is supposed to be the main "designer" of the
Miata). I thought it was interesting - although I still think that just
having an Elan around obviously affected the design...

Tim Mullen

Chantilly, VA
72 Elan Sprint
94 Miata R Package


Are you sure about this? If so, you're gluttons for punishment. Okeh, here
goes...

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 his 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
__________
If you can't go fast with 90hp, 900hp won't help you

[alfert]

OK so the Elan might be sitting in a Japanese garage....How do we get it
back? I wonder if it could be purchased for a reasonable amount??

[tvacc]

Do you have an Email for Bob Hall...I would like to ask him if I can use
this on the lotusowners.com site...

Please Email me off list

tony Vaccaro
lotusowners.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim or Jo Mullen [mailto:***@***.***
Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 7:44 PM
To: ***@***.***
Subject: [LotusElan.net] Miata Patterened After the Elan??


I remember a recent comment on the list about the Miata being copied from
the Elan. This is a copy of a message that was recently posted on the
Miata Forum by Bob Hall (who is supposed to be the main "designer" of the
Miata). I thought it was interesting - although I still think that just
having an Elan around obviously affected the design...

Tim Mullen

Chantilly, VA
72 Elan Sprint
94 Miata R Package


Are you sure about this? If so, you're gluttons for punishment. Okeh, here
goes...

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 his 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
__________
If you can't go fast with 90hp, 900hp won't help you

[naleder]

Message: 13
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 19:44:22 -0500
From: Tim or Jo Mullen <***@***.***>
Subject: Miata Patterened After the Elan??


All,

Does anyone here really expect a designer for a Japanese car company
to be able to freely admit what it was that they copied? I know that
Bob Hall doesn't work for them anymore, but if he admitted they copied
the Elan, shortly after the Lotus lawyers knocked on Mazdas door, they
would be knocking on his.

Just smile and be flattered

Steve
45/9101

[ddddumas]

Long before this thead started, I had read somewhere that Mazda had bought
four Lotus Elans, not just one. No matter what Mazda or or anyone else says
about the matter, all any person with common sense has to do is look at both
cars and review the respective date when each model was introduced. They'd
have to blind not to see that the Elan was the conceptual basis for the
Miata. It'd be better for them to admit it than to leave us with no
alternative to the notion that Mazda is that ignorant and stupid.

[BMMcGlynn at aol.com]

Well, I drive an Elan, and I know what it can and can't do. What's a Miata?

[motocicletta at aol.com]

I will second the Elan story as regards the Miata. At the time of the Miata
introduction it was reported in the enthusiast press (Car & Driver or Road &
Track) that they had 4 Elans in California, which were used, if not as direct
surces, than certainly as muses for the creative process. The source of this
information who ws reputedly the man in charge (don't remember the name
quoted in the article) also said that he fiqured that he would be able to get
one of the Elans for cheap when the project was done but that when he went
looking all of the cars had disappeared into Japan and no one could or would
say where. This may not be the true story but is is certainly the story
released to the press at the time.
Jeff Manuel
65 S2

[naleder]

All,

Does anyone out there actually expect a designer (even one that doesn't
currently work for them) of a Japanese car company like Mazda to actually
admit that they copied another car?

There's a couple of reasons why I think they wouldn't own up to it. Firstly
his pride as a designer would no doubt be somewhat compromised. Secondly,
they'd sue him! Lotus would be well within their rights to ask for
royalties. I can't imagine Mazda would be very happy about that.

Mazda has made a lot of money copying Lotus designs. Not just with the
mx-5, but before that the rx-7 bore just as much resemblance to the +2 in my
opinion. I didn't realise how similar they were until I saw my first plus
two. If you can imagine a +2 with a fastback on it I think the resemblance
would be uncanny. Anyone out there noticed noticed that as well?

Steve
69 s4 dhc 45/9101

[mwisch]

Steve mentioned ...



Actually, I doubt Lotus would have a claim. Lotus might have a design patent
on the Elan, but it is most unlikely, at least under US law. In general, you
can copy the shape of a product unless the shape is subject to trademark or
you are trying to "pass off" your product or the shape is NOT functional and
has acquired a "secondary meaning" which identifies the shape with a
specific maker so that it might confuse a consumer about the origin. The
Elan would not be subject to trademark. If the shape is functional, you can
copy. For the Elan, think aerodynamics and the physical necessity for pop-up
headlights because of the heighth of the front of the car. Even if the shape
were not functional, the question would be whether there is any significant
number of people who would look at a Miata and think it is really an Elan.
For what it is worth, I doubt that number would be very large.

Cheers,
Mike

["D.R. Maffei"]

If you remember the first tv spots were compairing it to a 356. That was a reach!

Don

Michael Wischkaemper <***@***.***> wrote: Steve mentioned ...



Actually, I doubt Lotus would have a claim. Lotus might have a design patent
on the Elan, but it is most unlikely, at least under US law. In general, you
can copy the shape of a product unless the shape is subject to trademark or
you are trying to "pass off" your product or the shape is NOT functional and
has acquired a "secondary meaning" which identifies the shape with a
specific maker so that it might confuse a consumer about the origin. The
Elan would not be subject to trademark. If the shape is functional, you can
copy. For the Elan, think aerodynamics and the physical necessity for pop-up
headlights because of the heighth of the front of the car. Even if the shape
were not functional, the question would be whether there is any significant
number of people who would look at a Miata and think it is really an Elan.
For what it is worth, I doubt that number would be very large.

Cheers,
Mike