Sitting alongside Toyota, Nissan and Honda as the backbone of the Japanese automotive industry, Mazda is perhaps most famous for trying to do something a little different with the internal combustion engine that we all know and love. We are of course talking about the rotary Wankel engine, a technology that Mazda pioneered and indeed popularised, but there's more to Mazda than unconventional motors.
With over a century of history that has seen Mazda morph from a manufacturer of cork products founded in 1920 to a hugely successful global automotive company, Mazda’s story has always had engineering innovation at its heart, along with strong ties to motorsport, cutting its teeth and testing its cars in a competition environment, picking up numerous victories along the way, including the first Japanese car to win at Le Mans.
So if you fancy a bit of revolutionary rotary power in the form of an eminently tunable sports car like the RX-7, a genre-defining roadster like the MX-5 or if you merely want a well-built, usable classic backed up by precision engineering and motorsport kudos then a classic Mazda is the car for you.
![2006 [06] Mazda MX-5 NC [160 BHP MX5]](https://assets.carandclassic.com/uploads/cars/mazda/C1801986/2006-mazda-mx-5-672b9d4482adb.jpg?fm=jpg&h=236&ixlib=php-4.1.0&q=80&w=420&s=646ade5531a9adac84d3de1e11acb1ea)