Beyond the roar of the engine or accelerating to high speeds, the mere design of an automobile can evoke powerful emotions. The lines that sweep over the body of the car perfectly encapsulate the magic of combining art with aerodynamics. While cars were once simply a means of travel, they have become a statement of expression and created a shared connection in a growing community.

A community that has since been created from the original conception of Tsutomu “Tom” Matano, designer of the Mazda MX-5 Miata and RX-7. Navigating life for Matano has taken him down many roads, from being an architectural design student to one of Mazda’s most renowned car designers, but Matano has never shifted from his innate ability to design. 

Matano was born in Nagasaki, Japan, where he grew up. Matano first discovered the automotive world from his maternal grandfather, who had owned a gasoline station business. 

“Every morning, I’d go there and open the garage door, and the fumes came out of the door, intoxicating. So I’d be infused with the whole fume right there and then, and ever since I’d been a petrolhead,” Matano said.

Along with his grandfather, his uncle was a major contributor to his early understanding of car design.

“My father’s side uncle had this Cadillac in Tokyo. I used to be in the passenger seat, and then couldn’t believe the thickness of the doors. On snowy days, the window washers would melt the snow. These cars had a motor-driven one, and I was so impressed with it, so that’s how one day I wanted to be in America because of the technology of that Cadillac,” Matano said.

The Cadillac has been a symbol of grandeur. It’s the luxury division of the American automobile company General Motors (GM). While Matano’s uncle showed Matano this side of living, his grandfather made sure he had a comprehensive understanding of the world beyond luxury.

“I didn’t know this till I grew up; my grandpa told my mother, ‘Take your son to the worst part of town in Tokyo.’ He always wanted us to see the lowest and the highest, so you always have a good perspective of where you belong,” Matano said.

Having this perspective helped Matano understand his place in the world and reaffirm his aspirations. As a young kid with a love for cars, Matano began drawing the cars around him.

However, as Matano grew up, his first inclination wasn’t to pursue automotive design. At first, Matano wanted to be an architectural designer, without knowing car design was even an option.

“When I was in engineering school, I used to do a part-time job with the architect’s office to do some of the blueprint drafting or making a scale model, and I liked that feel. When I was 12 or 13, we built a condo building on our property and I got to design some of the building with my mother. So I’d always liked that aspect of it. So I never knew the car design,” Matano said.

During engineering school, Matano aimed to design homes tailored to the individual’s lifestyle, maximizing the design’s potential. 

“I wanted the design to communicate that producers care or love,” Matano said. “I call it ‘empathetic design’ because if you know the mechanisms of the object and you communicate that properly to the people, then the machine is going to last a long time. Like a door knob, without knowing, you feel like, ‘I have to be gentle,’ ‘I have to be forceful.’ Depends on the shape of the handle.”

However, after Matano’s time in engineering school, he decided to switch to automotive design. Matano’s design philosophy also applied to car design, where he used the same empathy-based principle. 

“If I succeed by designing it from the inside, looking at you, how you operate, that’s one layer deeper than just designing superficially onto the surface,” Matano said.

Matano has carried this philosophy throughout his career. However, he started applying this at his first job, which was at GM in Detroit, Michigan, after he immigrated from Japan.

During his time at GM, he studied aerodynamics and illustration, wanting to understand the technical and practical aspects behind the aesthetics of design.

“He came to our studio and he wanted to learn more of the design techniques we used at General Motors. He was assigned to the studio I was in, and I think I was assistant chief at the time. It was interesting because he was so open and so willing to learn,” said Géza Lóczi, a fellow automotive designer known for his contributions at General Motors, VW, and Volvo, as well as a decade-long stint as a Transportation Design teacher at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena.

Matano and Lóczi spent a lot of time working together in GM’s studio. 

“Géza was the one mentoring me when I first started at GM,” Matano said.

At that time in the 1970s, Japan had allowed particular employers to promise “lifelong employment” to their employees until retirement. While not an official contract, it was considered an unwritten guarantee.

“So when I met Tom, it was at a premium time. He told me, ‘Géza, I love car design, but I don’t want to work in Japan for the rest of my life.’ At that time, if you got a job in Japan, it was for life. It’s good security, but he said, ‘I’m looking for something deeper, a little more expanding.’ And that’s what he’s done his whole life,” Lóczi said.

During their time together, they developed both mentorship and friendship. They got to be friends during their time in the studio, working on different sketch techniques. 

“You know how when you meet somebody for the first time and all of a sudden there’s like a camaraderie and a willingness and openness to say, ‘Okay, I can hear what you’re saying, and it makes sense.’ And that’s how it’s been with Tom,” Lóczi said.

Matano and Lóczi met through their time at GM but have remained friends ever since.

“I told my wife, ‘You know, there’s this really neat guy that came in town and I’d like to have him over to the house.’” Lóczi said. “They show up at our house in Royal Oak, Michigan, and he’s driving a wonderful car. We go walk to the curb and we meet Tom and Keiko, his wife, and since that time, we’ve been friends and still are friends after all these years.”

However, Matano’s time at GM was short-lived. During the 1970s, the United States experienced a massive energy crisis, during which oil became scarce. As gasoline prices rose, the consumer demand for fuel-efficient cars grew. As companies focused their efforts to combat the economic slowdown, many automotive manufacturers had to lay off workers. After relocating to Australia, Matano decided to apply for a job at Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW). 

“I was thinking of applying to BMW. I asked my boss to transfer me to Germany, but he wouldn’t let me go, so I had to leave on my own, and I had to quit. I applied at BMW and got it, so I went to BMW in Germany,” Matano said. 

Matano was intrigued by BMW’s appeal to creating a long-lasting, timeless design.

“I learned the process of making a long-lasting design. I learned what I went in to learn,” Matano said.

While Matano enjoyed his time at BMW, he soon learned of an opportunity back in Los Angeles. However, being Japanese was both beneficial and disadvantageous to Matano in securing this new job at Mazda, a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer.

“Mazda said, ‘We’re looking for a chief designer in America, and we recommended you to take that job.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ [They said,] ‘The only thing is that the chairman wants an American to run the studio, but we think you’re the best one because you speak the language and everything, and you have enough experience both in the US and Europe, so you’ll be the one to lead this. But the chairman wants an American, so you have to speak weird Japanese.’ Like Americans speak Japanese, but not fluent in Japanese. So I had to have an accent or something to make it like I’d been overseas too long. I couldn’t do it, though. I couldn’t fake it,” Matano said. 

Despite this, he remained the most qualified candidate that Mazda wanted to hire, so he was hired for the job in Los Angeles. However, he still faced difficulties with being Japanese in this role.

“The main thing is that because I’m Japanese, not like American-born Japanese, they feel I should know the rules and customs and protocols of a Japanese company. Which I don’t have any experience with. And if I learned too much of it, then they could take me too much into the Japanese way. I don’t want to be too much into their way of thinking. That was the hardest part. To keep the balance between the two. Too far, then they were not going to take you in,” Matano said. 

This balancing act extended to the design of Mazda’s cars as both the American and Japanese distributors realized they didn’t align on certain ideas, such as car colors. America’s Mazda team had asked Japan’s team to create a car with a slightly lighter neutral beige. 

“The color came in so yellow. I said, ‘Wait a minute, that must be Japanese neutral, and American neutral may be different.’ I made ten beige panels. One reddish, one yellowish. We tested in America what the neutral is. It’s number four from the red side. The same panel went to Japan. Number four from the yellow side is their neutral. We speak the same language, but they send in from their perception, and we’re receiving from our perception,” Matano said. “Like blue, America has slightly reddish blue, and Japan has a little greenish blue in preference between the two panels, for example.”

In this instance, Matano saw his attempt to balance the two cultures as a way to help them understand each other, utilizing an idea like the color panel.

“Because I understand both cultures, that’s why I feel the challenge. If you don’t know, you’ll never know. I was lucky to be in a position to do it. So I’m lucky I was in the right place at the right time,” Matano said.

With this new understanding of these cultures, Matano had established his role at Mazda. He was not only the designer but also took on every role to perfect each car he designed.

“Tom was assigned to do something relative to a new station wagon that Mazda was going to bring out because Mazda at that time,” Lóczi said. “Well, Tom was the engineer, and he’s lying on this big flat board, and he’s putting out all these lines that are going to go into tooling or into progressive engineering. So he was a master of a lot of trades, and nothing was beyond him.” Lóczi said.

While Matano worked at Mazda, he and Lóczi maintained a close friendship. They’d often share stories of the cars they were working on, and supported each other throughout their careers. 

“The thing about Tom is, he’s just a wonderful human being,” Lóczi said.

Matano was always supportive of collaboration and uplifting others and their work. Matano even had a wall dedicated in his Mazda studio where he would invite other designers to send in their favorite sketches.

“It was pieces of artwork that his friends in the industry had created. I was honored to offer him a sketch of an Oldsmobile that I had done, and it was on his ‘Wall of Fame,’” Lóczi said.

Beyond supporting other designers, he also saw the value in putting minds together and working to create something. An event took place in Tokyo where car designers from all around the world gathered.

“The thing was Porsche, that was the mark. What would the next Porsche look like? Tom and I had always wanted to do a sketch together on the same piece of paper. In Tokyo that night, Designer’s Night, I walk in and there are all these designers from around the world, and they have all the pads of paper and art facility tools. And everybody’s sketching,” Lóczi said. “It was brilliant. It was like harmony.”

Two of Matano’s most famous designs include the Mazda First Generation MX-5 Miata and the Third Generation RX-7 (FD). Both cars have been defining moments in Matano’s career. The MX-5 Miata is recognized by its signature pop-up headlights. It features a 2.0-liter inline-four engine and is small in size.

In designing the MX-5, Matano aimed to focus on the driver and the community that the car could create, simply through its design.

“Community was part of the original concept because I looked around at all the cars in the market at the time, Porsches, Ferraris — the well-established clubs got really good club support. I really wanted Miata to have the same level of club activities around the car. Luckily, we didn’t have to initiate too much. The people come to get the licensing to use the logo and stuff for the clubs. So initially, first year, we got 30,000 members in America. The Miata Club of America,” Matano said.

The Miata Club of America, now a defunct national organization, still has regional and local clubs around America, particularly the Southern California Miata Club and the Bay Area Miata Association in Northern California. 

“It’s just a whole community of like-minded people sharing our stories,” Matano said.

Part of what has made the Miata a car that has created such a close-knit community is that it is very customizable and can be personalized to each unique owner.

“In the Miata’s case, the dashboard has a panel that you can take off and wrap it up, change colors, put the fabric on it, whatever you wanna do. The center console has 3 pieces. Most cars today are one-piece injection molded because that’s better for more economical production. But I was adamant that there had to be changeable, customizable pieces. So any little pieces in the interior can be changed to the customer’s taste,” Matano said.

When the MX-5 was originally being produced, it sold for $14,000 to $15,000. For the car’s price point, the customer was getting a car carefully crafted around the driver, in line with Matano’s design philosophy, which ensures everything is thought through thoroughly.

“Every part of that car, every corner, you feel like every part belongs to the whole car. And I put a little extra piece on the bottom of the front and the bottom of the rear of the car, I wanted to complete it so the whole thing had a more uniform look,” Matano said. “For the price point of the car, the car that went into design has a much higher warranty than most of the other cars at the time, in my mind. So all in all, I think we put more care into the design, into every minute detail of the car.”

Taz Harvey, whose family opened the very first Honda dealership in the United States and currently owns a Mazda dealership in Dublin, remembers when the MX-5 first came out in 1989. 

“The Miata that he drew was a revolutionary car in that when it first came out, they sold as many as they could make. There was a six-month waiting list to get one. They were all sold out, they were all selling for over sticker,” Harvey said.

When initially designing the concept of the Miata, Mazda put together a team to develop this car. They needed a chief project manager, and luckily for them, they had a guy, but he came from a different design background.

“Our chief project manager, the chief engineer, came out of a truck studio, Mazda’s commercial vehicle engineering, he never did any passenger cars, and he never touched the sports cars. He’d never driven one,” Matano said.

However unconventional this pairing may have seemed at the time, one thing Matano realized later was the effect of combining his design background in cars with his chief engineer’s background in trucks.

“After 30 years, it dawned on me that the Miata is so durable. And I thought that maybe he’s a truck engineer, maybe that has something to do with it,” Matano said.

At one point, Matano reunited with the second and third-generation project managers and asked if the first one had any influence on the durability of the car.

“He goes, ‘Yeah, because when we’re doing the design, we have to be super lightweight, but when it comes to certain areas,’ he said, ‘Although this car is a lightweight, you don’t need that much strength on certain brackets or whatever. But he used truck classification on certain parts of the Miata. That’s part of the reason his background paved the way for it to be so durable.’ And I got the proof from the engineers saying that’s exactly what he did,” Matano said.

With this design team and their specific skills, they were able to transform the Miata into the dependable and long-lasting car it remains today.

“A Miata, over time, has become one of the most reliable cars ever made. If I had to go somewhere and someone said you need to take a 100 thousand-mile car and drive it somewhere, there’s no doubt, I’d take a Miata. One with a hundred thousand miles on it; like a new one,” Harvey said. 

Even when it’s time for a new car, many customers return wanting what they originally fell in love with: the Miata.

“We get people that come in all the time. We ask, ‘Why are you buying this car?’ They say, ‘Well, it’s my 5th Miata.’ So we get a lot of repeat business,” Harvey said.

Harvey, who also has extensive experience in endurance racing, including the grueling Dakar Rally and the Pan American, sees how cars that are as reliable as the Miata get turned into perfectly adapted race cars. 

“A lot of them have been turned into race cars. When you look at the classes at a weekend club race, the Spec Miata class, which was formed locally in Northern California, was the genesis for this Spec Miata,” Harvey said. “The most I’ve ever been on the track with is 75 Miatas at once.”

The Mazda Miata is the most raced car in North America, particularly because of its durability, according to the National Auto Sport Association, which has a Spec Miata class where drivers can race Miatas on the track.

Overall, with the timing of the specific team that was needed to create the Miata and the customer reception of a car that was extremely modifiable, the Miata remains a classic.

“That whole thing was perfectly matched in the right time at the right place,” Matano said.

On the opposite side of things, the RX-7 engineer was a pure sports guy.

“He went for the lightweight instead of the powerful sports car. He made it as nimble and light as possible. So good and bad. RX-7 is much more fragile than Miata because of its tune to the limit,” Matano said.

The FD was available in the US market from 1993 to 1995. It features a consecutive twin-turbo rotary engine, making it an exceptional high-performance vehicle. Matano had specific design requests, particularly regarding the car’s aesthetics.

“I put the puff on the roof because nobody touched the roof. The roof is almost never formed to be sculpted as a whole thing. By adding a little curvature to the roof to make it more complete. The rear of the FD had a rubber black piece closing that bottom end to match the top end. Same in the front. Not many cars are completed like that,” Matano said.

Matano was also influenced by the lifestyle of Americans to create a rear end of the car that was equally well-designed.

“I always believed the rear end is more important because Japanese cars always spend so much time in the front of the cars. They park their cars rear-end into their garage space. You always see the front end, never the rear end. Here, you park anyway you want, so it’s always the rear end facing you. And a lot of highway driving, so you’re always looking at the rear end, not the front end. So to identify the Mazda from any other Japanese cars, I wanted the rear end to be very memorable,” Matano said. 

The FD remains a favorite among car enthusiasts, and now, as it has surpassed its 30th anniversary, it stands as a valuable collector car as well.

“He did the FD, which is my favorite. The FD series is the last of the RX-7s. They were actually very expensive at the time. They didn’t sell a lot of volume of it, but they’re known for their performance and lightweight, kind of the things that really need to be the core of a great sports car. So if you look at that car, it’s another, I think, masterpiece,” Harvey said. 

Beyond the appeal of driving the car, it also stands as an appealing car to fellow designers. Matano has been the executive director for the School of Industrial Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California.

The RX-7 can typically be found in the student lounge of the University. Still, sometimes Matano comes in to switch it out with the Miata.

“Both of those designs, they’re iconic, they’re simple, but they have a lot of details that provide movement for those forms that they’re subtle, but once you see them, it keeps your eyes engaged on those vehicles and those designs,” Executive Director at the School of Industrial Design at the Academy of Art University, Antonio Borja said. “All of that was intentional, because that’s the core principle that Tom has passed on to me and we try to pass on to the next generation of designers: design beautiful sculptures that your eyes just can’t leave.”

Beyond the practicality of a car, it’s the connection between the driver and their vehicle that is so important for designers to try to appeal to their audience and create an emotional connection from their designs.

“It’s not just a vehicle to get you from A to B. It’s more than that. You’re driving an art form. You’re driving a design statement. You’re driving an emotional sense of yourself,” Lóczi said.

Both the MX-5 and RX-7 have left a lasting impression on automotive designers today and will continue to inspire future generations.

“Both of those cars are true shapes. They’re simple, they’re clean, they’re direct, and they’re beautifully proportioned,” Lóczi said.

These designs have caught the attention not only of their owners but also that of Hollywood.

“I was involved with the X-Man 2 [production]. We got the RX-8 in there because the director liked the four-door sports car. He could imagine the scene of four of them coming out of the X-Man cave and jumping out of the car, and the four doors open,” Matano said.

The process of incorporating the RX-8 into the X-Man 2 movie necessitated compromises between the Mazda corporation and the movie’s director. 

“That movie had a certain modification, but then, as Mazda, we had to hold the grounds on certain parts of it as our design philosophies. So we exchanged a few ideas together, and finally we both agreed. Then I got to make the actual prototype cars. That was fun,” Matano said.

Further, Disney was also inspired by the Miata.

“‘Cars’ had a Mia and Tia, two Miatas in there. And then, when I saw that, we finally became a household name. The credential that the world could recognize from the Miata is there. I felt really good that finally we got an acknowledgement like that,” Matano said.

These kinds of references to Matano’s cars made them extremely well-known, and in the case of the Fast and Furious franchise, also inspired the increase in car modifications.

“The Fast and Furious, the RX-7 would usually be a minority because it is more eccentric, like a computer 240Z or other cars, but the producer liked it and made it work. But because of that, so many modified RX-7s,” Matano said.

With the growing popularity of these cars, many communities have created their own local car meets dedicated to the Miata or RX-7. One such community, called Ohayo Roadsters, is a large group of Miata owners who meet bi-monthly on the first Sunday of the month. It’s a kind of Cars and Coffee event where owners and enthusiasts gather, talk about their cars, and even meet Matano, as he often attends their events at Dublin Mazda in Dublin, California.

Matano emphasizes the importance of reaching out to the younger generation to design. 

“The one thing that made me feel strong was anything I saw, what if I can do this better, what if I can do it this way and that way. Curiosity in what-if, come up with a hypothesis of that, then go back and prove the theory. If the pros outweigh the cons, or the pros hit all the future needs better than what it is today, it represents the probability that it will happen, whether you do it or somebody else comes and does it. So that’s when you decide to pursue that,” Matano said.

With Matano’s success in designing cars and creating a lasting community, he now finds success in teaching the next generation of car designers.

Borja first met Matano in 2000 while he was giving a speech to the Academy of Art University about his career. 

“Typically, you’re designing for function and beauty, but not necessarily to evoke a feeling in someone, and his presentation really focused on the different philosophies depending on the cultures that you take with designing things. Growing up in the states, we kind of see things through the lens of the US and him having more of a global perspective because he has experience from working in Australia, in Japan, in Germany, and in the US,” Borja said.

From the first time Borja and Matano met, they struck up a friendship in which Matano had become a mentor to Borja.

“When he then came on to become a director, he was one of my biggest mentors while I was here at the Academy. I remember being very grateful for how humble he is and how approachable he is,” Borja said.

Matano has a particular methodology when it comes to teaching that Borja describes as empowering his students by providing soft, guiding rails to help his students find the answers rather than just telling them.

“I’m working on a clay model, it’s a late night, and I’m working on the surface, and I think I have it just right. I’m pretty happy because it looks like the sketch and it’s dynamic, so I felt pretty good about it. He comes by, doesn’t say a word, just drops a water droplet on top of the surface that I was working on, and he walks away. He saw that I was excited, and he knew that I thought that I was done. I sit there and I just stare at the water droplet. At first, I’m just like, ‘Why did he wet my clay? That’s kind of weird.’ And then after a few minutes, I realized, ‘Wait a minute, the water’s not moving. The surface is not dynamic enough,” Borja said.

This became an immensely more empowering lesson for Borja that stuck with him much more than if Matano had just said, “your surface needs more ground.”

“He and I learned something together, and that is that you can never tell somebody how to do something. You put out the process, ‘This is the challenge. Now what is your idea?’ And he would let them alone. I learned that process from him, and I took it into my career of 46 years after I left General Motors, where you weren’t told by a committee how to design something,” Lóczi said. “That further cemented what Tom and I had always agreed upon, as far as how to guide people.”

Between all the cars Matano has created over the years and the people he has inspired through his designs and teaching, Matano’s endearing personality has made a lasting impression on so many lives, just as the impact his cars have had. When looking at the MX-5 or the RX-7, it’s an extension of Matano where he reaches out to his audience and connects with them.

“As his famous quote is, when you’re walking away from the car, you always look back and check it out, and it gives you a smile,” Borja said. “That’s the one thing that he does through his designs and his philosophies: he designs things that enrich people’s lives.”