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First 2014 Mazda3 ad appears

If we judge by your comments on our recent announcement post about the new Mazad3, you Autoblog readers approve, pretty wholeheartedly, about the redesign efforts happening over at Mazda. Pressed for an opinion, we'd be forced to admit that we find the new 3 quite fetching our own selves.
To add fuel to the fast-burning fire then, Mazda has gone ahead and dropped a 15-second pseudo commercial on YouTube, showing a very rendered Mazda3 in a very rendered driving environment. The short spot is really just slightly more dynamic than the images of the car, but there is a spot of mystery to it, as well.
Right at the start of the video, an interior shot of the car shows a transparent display screen of some kind, rising from the top of the 3's dash. An interesting choice, considering Mazda has bestowed an actual center-mounted display in on the hatchback's dash-top - albeit one that doesn't look like a clear piece of glass. Take a look below, and while you're there, check out a just-released official video of the Mazda3's reveal in New York.

Mazda Miata 'fathers' Hall and Case offer a tour through the roadster's history

The original Mazda Miata broke onto the automotive scene in 1989 and was a huge success. However, the convertible's genesis goes all the way back to the early '80s. Bob Hall and Dean Case were among the inside men of the program on the US side, and they were on hand at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca during the recent MX-5 event there to tell some of their stories about the project's beginning.
Hall was on the Miata project from very early on, and one of his most fascinating stories is how the convertible got its shape. The droptop wasn't necessarily going to be a rear-wheel drive roadster. There were both front-wheel-drive coupe and mid-engine concepts being considered. In fact, the classic look of the NA generation was the least favorite of the three at the sketch stage.
Hall comes off as a jokester hiding a genius mind. He has a fountain of information in his head about what a Miata should be, but it all comes down to "less is more." However, he admits that it's easy to conceive that idea, but it's much harder to actually execute it well.

Mazda CEO closes door on talk of RX sports car revival

Some rumors in the auto industry simply refuse to die. Over the last decade, a few of the strongest have focused on Japan. A few years ago, we could have explained away the constant whispering over a new Toyota Supra, Acura NSX or Mazda RX-7 as nostalgia for Japan's golden era of performance. Today, though is different.
We already have the Nissan GT-R, and, thanks to the Toyota FT-1 Concept, a Supra successor finally appears to be on the way. Acura will someday, allegedly, deliver on its promise to put the NSX on sale. So where does that leave the third member of the Japanese performance trio mentioned above? Well, um, it still isn't happening.
"We don't have that kind of vehicle in our future product plan," Mazda CEO Masamichi Kogai told Automotive News when asked about a successor to the rotary-powered RX line. "If you increase the number of segments, then the resources we can allocate to each will decline and that will prevent us from developing truly good products."