Mazda’s folding hardtop

The fourth-generation MX-5 has found a very neat solution to a problem we didn’t know existed. Neat because the lines of the car in side view remain very appealing – far from detracting from the Mk3’s lines, the new roof has enhanced them. According to Julian Montousse (Mazda North America’s design director) at the 2016 New York auto show, the design of the whole car came first and then the engineering was “back-cast” to achieve the folding roof. He told Car Design News: “This silhouette has been around since we started the MX-5 project, so was designed in from the start. With a full roof it’s much easier to take in the form as a whole – immediately you walk up to this car and are drawn in by its proportions.”

The C-pillar is crucial to making the fastback proportions work, and it is rumoured that Mazda designers spent three months working on this alone. It was worth it, and the smooth slope of the roofline enhances this pocket supercar. Unlike the retractable version, the coupé styling is retained when the roof is down, and when the roof is up the drive is quieter thanks to sound-deadening material built into the roof lining.

The MX-5 RF is nearly a Targa, but the rear screen doesn’t remain in place. The buttress lifts as one piece, the aluminium roof and rear window tuck gracefully back and under, then the buttress gently descends back into position with an elegance that makes this car look a lot more expensive than it actually is – almost like a McLaren 650S, in fact. The buttresses are plastic, the roof aluminium, but Mazda has blended the materials in an authentic way, hitting the sweet spot in the overlap of design and engineering.

In three-quarter rear view with the top down the new buttresses seem a little chunky and I don’t love the DLO graphic/plastic insert. But I am quibbling. Overall it is very good-looking. There is something of the Ferrari 559 to the buttresses, and from some angles it also reminds me of the pretty but doomed Marcos TSO GT2.

But this isn’t a European sports car, in spite of its roadster design heritage – it is gloriously Japanese. As the roof opens and then folds away in 13 seconds of gentle purring, it is like time-lapse documentary footage of flowers unfurling, and, of course, origami, and is utterly mesmerising. Masashi Nakayama, the Mazda MX-5 chief designer, has created pure theatre.