Created by Car and Driver for Mazda
“Mazdas have always had this way they rotate,” said Dave Coleman, manager of vehicle dynamics for Mazda. “They rotate right around the driver, and they just feel happy to be in a corner.” Coming from a manager working for nearly almost all other automotive brands, that quote would read like the company line?something written in a document distributed during new-employee orientation. But Coleman works for Mazda, a company that ran with the Zoom-Zoom tagline for years before supplanting it with the more definitive Driving Matters®. Coleman’s job, then, is to make sure that every car Mazda sells is imbued with a sense of fun and involvement usually reserved for cars with much higher price tags. That mission stems from an ancient philosophy known as jinba-ittai, a Japanese phrase that roughly translates to the relationship between horse and rider. The phrase originated during the Kamakura period (1185?1333), a time when military technologies in Japan were advancing at a never-before-seen rate. The horseback archers at the time believed that the best way for them to hit their targets effectively was to develop a ?oneness? with the horse, therefore allowing them to move in a more impactful way. It’s a belief that has been internalized at Mazda and incorporated into the fabric of each model it produces.
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