Design Development: Mazda Vision Coupé

Introduction

“For the last five years, we’ve been considering what to do with Kodo,” says Kevin Rice, design director, Mazda Motor Europe, referring to Mazda’s ‘soul of motion’ design philosophy. “Is it a purely evolutionary direction we’re going to take, or will we make more dramatic jumps? This process of deciding what to do was a five-year journey, the last two years of which involved perfecting the Vision Coupé.”

The first car seen from this programme was the striking two-door RX-Vision concept (2015). “Parallel to that, we were already working on the Vision Coupé,” says Rice. “They were done together during this five-year journey – but we tuned it [Kodo] after the RX-Vision to take it in a much more elegant, pure, simple way.”

He describes the RX-Vision and Vision Coupé as the ‘bookends’ for Kodo: the former at one extreme of sensuality, and the latter as representing refinement and elegance.

Kodo is, says Rice (echoing the presentations made by Mazda’s head of design Ikuo Maeda at the Tokyo Motor Show), about breathing life and movement into the design.

For the exterior, its latest interpretation sees the use of highly sophisticated surfacing across both positive and concave negative surfaces to give dynamic and constantly-changing reflections, rather than depending upon fixed lines and features in the architecture.

“The target is creating forms both beautiful and thoughtfully simple, without any unnecessary and unwanted design elements,” he says, “which requires time, patience and discipline. It’s Japanese elegance, it’s the control, it’s the art of light: that’s the future form of movement Kodo will take, and in future, all of our cars will be designed the same way.”

Exterior

The ‘four-door coupé’ layout, with classic long hood/rearward cabin proportions and a flowing silhouette, was chosen as a way to express and demonstrate elegance, Kevin Rice explains, with reference to Mazda’s R360 and Luce coupés of the 1960s.

It was developed in an intensive process of creating sculptures, a series of scale models and full-size clay models in all three of Mazda’s studios (Hiroshima, Japan; near Frankfurt, Germany; and California, USA), Rice says.

“All the design at Mazda these days is conducted together by the three studios. We don’t have three separate studios: it’s one big studio that happens to be scattered between three different locations. We work together on a daily basis, and then every week we have a [virtual] meeting, and then every couple of months we physically get together to go through everything. At every point there are checks and balances, but all three studios agree on the direction forward.”

Rice admits that “we went in many, many directions” until the full-sized theme was decided, some three years into the programme.

“From that point on something dramatic happened,” he says, “and the idea of a different form of Kodo movement came through the next two years. It started with the RX-Vision when we decided that we’re not looking to use the architecture of the car to describe the movement: we decided to use reflections to do that.”

He describes how the bodyside appears different according to the angle of vision, and how “it was very clear that there was a movement over the front wheel, a movement over the rear, and because they didn’t quite match, that brought a nice tension.”

“What we’re now trying to do is have an effect whereby you discover the motion, it’s not always there, and it’s a very sophisticated way of putting the feeling of motion into a vehicle. To do that, you have to control reflections, on positive and negative surfaces.”

The negative surface of the bodyside was tricky to resolve, he says.“We had to scan the clay, because even with DI-NOC on it you can’t really tell what’s going on, because the car’s not moving. So we scanned it, put the data into the computer.”

“We animated it to see what the reflections were doing and until the very last minute they were doing horrible things – but we had to correct this by hand, because you could actually feel the surfaces, get the human aspect into the car. So we did a process of [manual] full-sized work and then simulating possible reflections in a cityscape or whatever, remodelled by hand – and that’s why it took us two years to get the reflections right!”

The final model was developed and completed in Japan. “They worked intensely on it and every time we came over for a design review we changed it; the process took forever!” laughs Rice.

“We have to know what the visual effect [the reflection] is doing because that affects the proportions as well, [meaning] the proportions have to be tuned. That’s why it took two years to do that final step. But now we know how to deal with that, hopefully possible production cars will go a bit quicker!”

Rice highlights the importance of Japanese culture, design, craftsmanship and artistic techniques, pointing out that the Vision Coupé subtly reflects sori (the curve of a traditional katana sword) in its side profile.

“It almost isn’t a curve, it almost looks straight – European curves don’t do that, they have much more of a bend to them. It’s almost straight, but at the last minute it starts to accelerate, and that’s what you see in a katana sword, and this is also the curve they use in traditional buildings.”

“This curve was copied from a tree branch – it’s the natural position of a tree branch; it starts to bend more at the end. Centuries ago they tried to replicate that in their temples, and now we’re using these same natural principles to create the power and tension in the Vision Coupé. And this is, of course, the same curve that our modeller used when he created [the first] steel sculpture.”

Interior

Integral to the early experimental phase of the project were collaborations with artists and craftspeople to create decorative artefacts, fashion pieces and products – all of which fed into the creation of the interior, including the approach to materials and detailing.

The idea of negative space was a key inspiration for the interior, too, says Rice, referring to Japanese botanical paintings: “it’s not so much the shape of the plant that’s important, it’s the spaces around it and inside it, which in Japanese aesthetics give it a special form of power and movement. You see that in traditional gardens, calligraphy, and Japanese poetry is based on these same principles too.”

He refers to Japanese interior design in the home, adding: “They’re always trying to have a connection between the outside and the inside; there’s a flow, there’s a space, there’s a movement.”

“Because Kodo’s flexible, we aren’t saying what kind of movement – we can use these traditional Japanese art techniques to help us in the modern direction we’re taking with our interior. So the flow of space, or flow around spaces, is really important.”

Translated into the Vision Coupé’s cabin, this attention to ma, a Japanese concept of space, resulted in a series of flowing, curving shapes and an architecture where “the main dashboard and the centre console intersect but they don’t physically touch,” says Rice.

“It looks like the centre console really twists and disappears somewhere under there [the IP], who knows what’s under there? It seems to go on forever.”

“We worked with the artists to find a new approach to materials,” Rice adds, “and that is then reflected in the treatment of the hard surfaces.”

“Because we are positioning it as a luxury vehicle, of course we are using leather, but it is the positioning of the leather in relation to the new finishes to the interior, that we’ve learnt through the artistic collaboration, which makes this new dynamic for us. This idea of space, and flow and movement through the elements, gives even traditional materials a completely new effect.”

“The leather seams aren’t as many as you’d normally put in. They’re actually used strategically to give an extra feeling of motion. Traditionally, seams on leather are used to demonstrate an idea of luxury – it’s almost like the more seams you put in, the more luxury you’ve got – but that’s a very old-fashioned approach.”

Rice also highlights the grain of the shima-kokutan, or ebony: “It’s the wood used in traditional Japanese temple design, and prayer beads, which has a much darker, more natural feel. The wood in itself has a certain texture and we’re using its natural characteristics to bring an authentic effect across.”

“What you see quite often is perfect-grained woods, to show perfection, but trees aren’t particularly perfect – we wanted to show the natural form of the wood, as opposed to a manipulated version of it.”

Mazda cites its jinba ittai experience, meant to imitate the close relationship a rider has with their horse: an appropriate, intuitive series of commands which seals the connection and in turn helps the driver feel safely enclosed. Yet in achieving this, the driver must not feel claustrophobic.

This is another aspect of the spatial harmony, in particular the flow of air between components or elements to create atmosphere. Integral to this is the separation of the door trim, IP and the centre console at their intersecting points. “There’s the optical movement of air between the main elements,” says Rice.

This links back again to the ‘less is more’ philosophy and how this supports the elements which remain: “That gives this wonderful feeling of movement, a subtle form of movement,” he says.

“What we do with the main dashboard itself is give it a really strong horizontal core, but then if you look, that sweeps down into the doors, accelerates downwards as the exterior does, so you have this wrapping motion around you. But then as the centre console glides somewhere underneath the main horizontal dash, you have this feeling of movement of a second register.”

The atmosphere is enhanced by the rich dark browns of the leather and wood. “Most interiors are black when you’re trying to get across an idea of high quality, so we’ve actually lightened it up. OK, it’s a dark brown, but used in a more natural direction than black,” Kevin Rice concludes.

“It’s our decision as to how we can authentically bring across our Japanese aesthetics in an elegant way, that’s our take on that, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with current interior design trends. It’s traditional Japanese, but not what Japanese car manufacturers have done.”

Mazda Vision Coupé

Vehicle type
Concept / grand tourer

Managing executive officer; head of design, brand style
Ikuo Maeda

Chief designer, advanced design studio
Norihito Iwao

Design director, Mazda Motor Europe
Kevin Rice

Project started / completed
2012 / 2017

Launch
Tokyo / October 2017