Few companies are making pure, timelessly beautiful sports cars any more. The Mazda Iconic SP might be the very last one that uses gasoline, if it gets made. A few more details about it have surfaced, and it seems like Mazda engineers are stopping just short of telling us that it’s green-lit.
Speaking with Motor Trend, Mazda Chief Technical Officer Ryuichi Umeshita emphatically that the car will not be a replacement for a Miata. It will be larger than the Roadster. “You can expect Iconic SP will be a good successor for RX-7,” Umeshita said.
The concept was shown as driven by batteries with a dual-rotor rotary engine acting as a range extender. The rotary would use gasoline to recharge the battery, but not drive the car directly. However, Umeshita revealed to Motor Trend that there may also be a version where the rotary engine is in fact the primary form of motivation.
As for the name, Umeshita says that it “is not a successor to an existing model.” It could revive a nameplate, the most obvious being an RX-something, but he says it could also be something new. “There is very little possibility that we will name it Cosmo,” he states.
It could debut as early as 2026, but there’s still that pesky “business case” that Mazda needs to justify the expense. If that case is made, the Iconic SP could hit the market before the fifth-generation Miata, which is still, according to the article, “still a few years out”. Masashi Nakayama, Mazda’s design head, told Motor Trend that it will keep the ND’s size but its shape will be influenced by the Iconic SP. Umeshita reassures that when the NE arrives, it will come with a manual transmission option. Together, the NE and Iconic SP (if it happens) will fill different niches in a two-sports car lineup.
