Car and Driver: Char-S: Blackened Mazda Racing Concepts for the Tokyo Auto Salon

With the Tokyo Auto Salon just over the horizon, Mazda’s trotting out a trio of “Racing Concept” vehicles based on production models. Featuring shadowy color schemes, the Mazda 6, CX-3, and Miata concepts sport subtle enhancements illustrating the long dark teatime of Kodo, Soul of Motion.

Roadster RS Racing Concept
-Perhaps presaging a future Mazdaspeed variant of the Miata—a thing for which the teeming masses have been clamoring since before Mazda rolled out some pieces of the latest model in New York a couple of years ago—the RS Racing concept features subtle aero mods and a height-adjustable suspension. Translastion software tells us that Mazda’s Japanese blurb on the car ends with, “We have realized the goodness of balance.” Given the Miata’s spot on our latest 10Best list, we’d have to agree with that.

CX-3 Racing Concept
-“CX-3 racing” might sound a mite tautological, for Mazda’s small ute is neither a Dakar basher nor a Sebring contender, but among its set, it’s the most athletic and charming of the lot, largely because it’s merely a slightly dumbed-down Mazda 3. Here the news is largely about aesthetics, with a red-accented aero kit and a microsuede interior featuring racy “Mazdaspeed”-embroidered buckets. Because looking hot at Safeway is the number-one reason to go to Safeway.

Atenza Racing Concept
-In the future, perhaps we’ll all be conversing in a real-world version of Blade Runner’s Cityspeak. We like to think it will sound something like the following machine-translated paragraph about the Atenza Racing Concept.

“Combining a large 径鍛 concrete wheel and the harmonic drive to “MAZDASPEED” aero parts, strengthen the image of running, interior adopts throughout the Alcantara ® smooth texture, has improved the quality. We will propose a customized to more emphasize the presence of as car quietness and the flagship car that was involved in acoustic.”

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It will all make perfect sense to everybody, and a man who needs a reasonably priced family sedan with admirable canyon-carving skills will dress like Pancho Villa disguised as a Yakuza hobo. He’ll drive a Mazda 6 customized just like this. Nobody will find any of it abnormal. Invariably, such a car will be involved in acoustic. We’re not sure about that concrete wheel thing, though. That just sounds gnarly.

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