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Mazda MX-5 Miata engineers have a serious obsession with weight loss.
The Japanese automaker is already turning its attention towards the next-generation Mazda MX-5 Miata and are planning to make it even lighter by using carbon fiber. Although the fifth-generation MX-5 won’t arrive until 2021 at the earliest, MX-5 program manager Nobuhiro Yamamoto shared that it is unlikely the MX-5 will get smaller, but it should get lighter. “The size is right,” said Yamamoto in an interview with Autocar. “But in the future, lightweight materials will be very important and will be used in this car. Now carbon fiber is very expensive, but we have in development affordable carbon fiber, so the MX-5 will be lighter in the future.”
SEE ALSO: 2016 Mazda MX-5 Review
With even more weight being shed, there’s a possibility that the engine powering the MX-5 will get even smaller. Yamamoto admits that as the vehicle weight gets lower, a smaller engine and smaller tires can be used. That means a three-cylinder engine could be under the hood of the next-generation MX-5, delivering similar performance figures to today’s four-cylinder mill.
Yamamoto had some bad news, though, saying that the Speedster and Spyder concepts based on the MX-5 are just dream cars, adding that they aren’t feasible to produce.
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