Writings
First
in a series of articles for the launch of Mazda's Third-Generation
Roadster
I
first met Shuko Yamamoto just prior to the completion
of the third-generation Roadster development project.
He was an engineer who had lived and breathed sports
cars at Mazda’s vehicle development department
throughout his storied career. At 50 years of age,
Yamamoto’s passion for and commitment to creating
the next great automobile burned as brightly as ever.
Acting as the project’s deputy general manager,
his role was to guide on-the-ground development operations
in line with the general manager’s vision and
direction. Yamamoto was the coach on the field.
I
clearly remember Yamamoto once saying, “We’re
so close. We’re 99.5 percent there. But something’s
missing. If we get this right, we can finish this
with no regrets.” What was that one half of
one percent? What was it that Yamamoto sensed was
missing? He was talking about something he’d
detected in the handling. “When I turned the
steering wheel quickly, it didn’t feel the way
I’d imagined it would feel,” he explained.
“We hadn’t quite got to ‘Jinba Ittai.’
When we did the internal test drives with our sales
and marketing staff, most of them said they didn’t
notice the problem. But there were a few critics among
the real Roadster connoisseurs who sensed something
was amiss. With the vast majority satisfied with the
handling, it was tempting to call it a day. But we
wanted to nail it. We wanted to be able to walk away
from this at the end of the day with absolutely no
regrets.”
The
quintessential engineer, Yamamoto could always be
counted on to speak his mind with passion and conviction.
And always with a quiet smile.
Within
Mazda, once he set his sights on a goal, Yamamoto
was well-known for his tireless determination in pursuing
perfection, even through entirely new automotive technologies.
Yamamoto had that special fire that burns within every
great engineer. And it would be his task to take the
third-generation Roadster that additional one half
of one percent to perfection. “It was early
summer two years ago when the Roaster development
group called me,” Yamamoto recalls. “The
project was well underway, the engine specs were set,
and the draft design of the chassis was near completion.”
Takao
Kijima, the project general manager, took it upon
himself to personally negotiate with Yamamoto’s
department head to have the engineer transferred to
the Roadster development team. The project was deadlocked.
It had proved a formidable challenge indeed to translate
“Jinba Ittai” into reality. The project
needed a veteran engineer expert in sports car technologies
to push the development forward. And that task fell
to Yamamoto.
Yamamoto
had had a fascination with automobiles since he was
a young boy growing up in Kochi Prefecture during
the 1950s. He recalled that, one day as a junior high
school student, he read that Mazda had begun developing
revolutionary rotary engines. He became fixed on the
idea of working with this exciting new engine technology.
From that day forward, his dream was to become an
engineer at Mazda.
Yamamoto
worked hard to see that that youthful dream was realized.
Years later, after joining Mazda, he was assigned
to the Rotary Engine Research Department where he
worked for over 15 years developing state-of-the-art
rotary engine designs. His groundbreaking work included
not only engines for mass production sports cars,
but race cars as well, such as the 4-rotary engine
that won the infamous 24-Hour Le Mans in 1991. He’d
been immersed in Mazda engine design and development
since the first-generation RX-7. After the successful
launch of the third-generation RX-7, Yamamoto was
assigned to the second-generation Roadster development
team. Yamamoto’s engineering experience was
extraordinarily broad, ranging from sports cars to
racing, from the RX-7 and the Roadster to the world’s
most grueling endurance races. Here was an engineer
who lived and breathed Mazda. It was clear to Kijima
that Yamamoto was the man to help the team break through.
“When
my department head asked me about working on the Roadster
with Kijima, my response was simple,” Yamamoto
recalls. “I said, ‘I’ll do it.’
I was happy to take the assignment. I’d worked
with Kijima on the RX-7 development. I understood
and identified with his approach. I resolved to immerse
myself in the project and take Kijima’s vision
and mission as my own.”
Joining
the Roadster development group, Yamamoto gave himself
entirely to the task at hand. The Roadster’s
driving performance became is sole obsession.
“It
immediately became clear to me that our challenge
was to capture the ‘essence’ of the Roadster,”
Yamamoto explained. “Without that, the result
simply wouldn’t have been a Roadster. And the
results of all our efforts to evolve the next generation
would have been in vain. That ineffable essence is
everything. It should be felt with a press of the
accelerator or a simple turn of the wheel. Each time
you drive that car, you should delight in it. It goes
without saying that you ought to feel that sense of
exhilaration on a racing circuit, but you want to
feel it wherever and whenever you drive. Otherwise
what’s the point of owning a Roadster?”
‘Essence’
is a deceptively simple word. But to actually manifest
a thing only sensed through feeling and intuition
is extraordinarily difficult. To sense and intuit
is an intensely personal experience. And to work toward
such a subjective experience is often more of an art
than a science. The third-generation Roadster was
designed with the latest technologies. The engine
and body were completely updated. Looking at the numerical
test results, the new Roadster’s performance
far surpassed its predecessaors. And yet, though the
quantifiable performance had been dramatically improved,
the driving experience hadn’t necessarily been
commensurately enhanced. Recreating the essence of
the Roadster experience was proving extremely difficult.
Yamamoto
framed six typical, everyday scenarios within which
to evaluate the Roadster driving experience. Yamamoto
explained each scenario as follows.
“The
first scenario was simply driving your car out of
a parking lot. You start the engine, step on the clutch,
engage the transmission, turn the steering wheel a
little, and accelerate in the normal way. The question
was how to turn this mundane experience into a pleasurable
occasion.”
The
second scenario involved another typical situation.
When you drive at 40 km/h to 60 km/h, do you really
feel the comfortable acceleration of the car on the
level surface of the road? The third scenario depicted
taking a left-hand turn at an intersection. You downshift
to slow down, move into the intersection, turn to
the left. When you accelerate and shift up again,
is the sound and feel of the engine a pleasure? The
fourth situation involved accelerating away from a
tollbooth back onto a highway. Scenario number five
depicted overtaking another car and changing lanes
on an expressway. The final scenario, number six,
had to do with achieving a sense of absolute comfort
and confidence driving on a twisting stretch of road.
Yamamoto
noted that the team conducted an enormous number of
test runs. “These six scenarios provided the
basis for a entirely new set of performance evaluations,”
Yamamoto explained. “It was impossible, of course,
to achieve the results we wanted based entirely on
feeling and intuition. The individuals’ experiences
had to be somehow measured, quantified, researched
and analyzed. Unless the ‘essence’ of
the driving experience is analyzed in this way, it’s
simply not possible to consistently manifest that
essence in an automobile.” No expense was spared
as technological innovations were then painstakingly
developed to respond to the results of these meticulous
experiential analyses.
It
was in this way that Yamamoto was able to identify
that one half of one percent shortcoming in the steering
wheel. And when the car was later retuned to final
specifications, 100 percent performance was achieved.
And the project moved ahead toward mass manufacturing.
In
the end, Yamamoto saw the third-generation Roadster
as one of his finest achievements. As Yamamoto himself
put it, “This was a once-in-a lifetime job.
Everyone on the team understands now that this was
a truly unique opportunity. It’s incredibly
rare to redesign a world-renowned lightweight sports
car from the ground up. That’s why we were determined
to finish this project with no compromises and no
regrets.
Because
the Mazda Roadster has made its mark in automotive
history, to take part in its evolution is to participate
in history’s unfolding. And Yamamoto’s
rare passion and commitment are now also part of that
remarkable, ongoing story.
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