As promised earlier in the month, Mazda has brought two new concept cars to the Tokyo Motor Show—and if they’re truly any indication of Mazda’s production car future, roads around the world are about to get a little more beautiful.
First up, we have the Mazda Vision Coupe Concept, a four-door “coupe” preview of the brand’s overall design future. Featuring an evolved and “more mature” interpretation of Mazda’s Kodo design language first seen back in 2010, it reads like an elongated, four-door version of last year’s RX Vision Concept. With its simple, circular head- and taillamps, an oversize, chrome mustache that integrates into the car’s “eyes,” wide-set hips, and a sleek-as-all-hell shape, this is undoubtedly one of the best looking four-door coupes to grace the concept car stage in a while.
The unbridled elegance continues on the inside, as the Vision Coupe sports somewhat of a caricature of a luxurious-yet-simple cockpit. It’s not hard to imagine Mazda pulling off something similar in a future production car.
Up next, we have the Kai Concept, a compact hatchback that seems designed to serve as a prologue to the next-generation Mazda3. Taking design ideas seen in the Vision Coupe and moving them onto a smaller, hatchback package, it paints a picture of a fourth-gen 3 that keeps much of what people love from the current car—but with quite a bit more attitude. (The next-gen compact shouldn’t just be appealing on the outside, either; the next Mazda3 is set to debut the company’s revolutionary, compression ignition Skyactiv-X engine.)
Given Mazda’s penchant for consistently delivering cars with beautiful design both inside and out, we had high expectations for where the brand would take things next. So far, we like what we see.