MAZDA MX-30
How closely related is our EV to its famous MX-5 namesake?
MILEAGE 1420
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT
Will unusual EV make daily driving a joy, or will its limitations frustrate over time?
Ford has done it with the Mustang, MG has done it with the ZS and soon Opel will do it with the Manta. What is it about hallowed sporting model names that makes them such attractive options for newfangled and entirely unrelated SUVs, often of the electric variety?
Perhaps understandably, such overtly nostalgia-bating marketing ploys have attracted their fair share of criticism from enthusiasts (we once fantasised about the Ford Capri coming back as a jacked-up EV and had to go into hiding for weeks), but Mazda seems to have got away with slotting its new electric crossover into the MX lineage.
Surely the weighty, upright and underpowered MX-30 can’t have demonstrable or tangible links to the flagbearer of that model family, the MX-5? I’ve previously suggested that the relationship is detectable, but only a back-to-back stint in each would determine whether that was any more than a case of me being drawn in by the marketing hype.