No weight to this concept

To celebrate 20 years of sales success with its funky MX-5 sports car, Mazda has come up with the most useless concept car in the world – the MX-5 Superlight.

The MX-5 (or Miata, as it is known in some other markets), thoroughly deserves the success and loyal following it has gained thanks to being a simple, fun, relatively affordable no-frills sports car.

Surely Mazda could somehow have conjured up a better way of celebrating the model than this “Superlight” version of the MX-5?

The car is brashly claimed by Mazda to offer a mass of below 1000 kilograms, thus providing a true, “purist” driving experience.

Mazda MX-5 Superlight

You may be thinking that’s absolutely incredible. How did Mazda manage to get the weight down to little more than a Smart car (and its clueless driver)? Did they make use of some new, space-age material similar to that used on F1 machines?

Hardly.

Mazda simply removed “extravagant” features like a roof, carpets and even the windshield.

No windshield... no clever point, either

GROUNDBREAKING STUFF!

Removing large chunks of an object actually decreases its weight!

Come to think of it, my friend’s cell phone is rather heavy and annoying. Perhaps she could use Mazda’s methodology and remove her keypad, screen and battery, thereby solving her handset’s obesity problem and creating the cell phone version of an Apple Air?

If only Mazda had made this sensational breakthrough public even earlier!

But seriously now, the point of any concept car is to showcase fresh ideas and technology for future mass-produced vehicles. Forgive me, but removing a car’s windshield and using it to make dramatic, impressive-sounding claims about weight saving is just daft.

Even more pointless is Mazda’s claim that the engine has been tuned to deliver a “racy” sound. With no plans by the manufacturer to actually produce and sell the thing, we’ll never really know, or care.

The Superlight proves nothing and is like the pair of socks each of us will receive at least twice a lifetime – a seriously dire birthday gift. Only in this case, the genuinely capable MX-5 is the disappointed recipient.

The real MX-5 deserves a greater symbol of recognition than the silly Superlight