Car Design News visits Hiroshima to exclusively talk with Mazda’s global design boss Masashi Nakayama about his varied inspirations, the importance of clay and the art of lawn-mowing
Masashi Nakayama is general manager of Mazda’s global design division, overseeing studios in Hiroshima in Japan, Irvine in California and Oberursel, just outside Frankfurt, Germany. Joining the firm back in 1989 as an interior designer – when the first MX-5 launched – he’s gone on to project-lead and programme-manage the current version of the roadster too.
The late-80s industrial design graduate of Kyoto City University of Arts cut his teeth developing interiors for the 2003 Mazda 3 Mk1 and RX-8 before heading up the interior design studio in 2000. He was made assistant chief designer of Mazda Europe R&D Centre in 2001 and went on to become chief designer for the strategic design studio in 2007. During this period design hits included the 2007 Ryuga and 2011 Minagi concepts – the latter prefacing the shapely and commercially successful 2012 CX-5 crossover.
Into the 2010s he became product division program manager and chief designer, before landing the role of deputy general manager of the design division in 2019. After taking over the top design job from Ikuo Maeda in 2021, he created the pebble-smooth Iconic SP concept for the 2023 Japan Mobility Show, replete with slim pop-up lights and butterfly doors. Widely lauded by media critics, it also scooped second place in Car Design Review 11’s Concept Car Design of the Year awards, as voted for by his designer peers.
On a bright April 2025 day in Hiroshima, a few months off Nakayama’s 60th birthday, Car Design News visited him at the newly refurbished Mazda Museum and Design Centre to discuss what’s next for the Iconic SP and wider Mazda design, his continued belief in clay and secret love of lawn-mowing…
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