Never meet your heroes...? A photo essay
 

I had a fantastic opportunity to meet one of mine this week. I'm fortunate enough to count amongst my friends a much respected rotary engine builder here in the backwoods of the South of England. So when I learned that he had in his shop an example of the car which started it all, the little sporting coupe with the voodoo engine that was destined to take Toyo Kogyo from niche oddity to cutting edge innovator in the world auto market... well, fair to say I was in like Flynn! And I thought some of you guys might like to see a few pics?

In actual fact, this is only the third time I've ever had the chance to stand next to a genuine Cosmo. Once was at the re-launch party for a now-defunct rotary tuning shop a few years back, once was at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2011. Both those cars (might well have been the same one) were badged as Mazda 110S. The one currently in da RotorShed is badged as a Cosmo, and there are a few other details I've noticed from looking back at photos. And speaking of photos, shall we?

I'm hoping no-one will mind if I get a bit indulgent now?

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One of the first things that impresses you about the car is just how tiny it is. It can't be a lot bigger than an original MX-5... errr, Miata... and probably quite a bit smaller than a current one. Another thing is how well-proportioned it is

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Yeah, it's got great long overhangs but it hides them well and just looks right, from any angle

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Considering how overblown and fussy a lot of Japanese styling is, this is certainly a purer design than many, letting the shapes of the car dictate its look rather than stuck-on trim and tinsel. Look at it without knowing what it is, and without the overall shape in-shot and you can really see several influences going on... E-Type, Alfa, SL Merc...

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...Americana 50s-style rocket thruster rear lights...

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...Superamerica Fezza-esque vents...

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Put it like that, it oughtn't work I guess, but it does and I love it, every bit. Even the funny little louvres in the headlight pods. The rear lights especially are a superb touch. Again, the ones I've seen previously had an orange top light for the indicators, but this one with its all-red lenses looks even better. And so maybe I'll just shut up and let the pictures do the talking.

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Open the tiny bonnet and it's amazing how much space there is in there... and mostly this is due to how tiny the little 10A engine is. Plenty of funny things going on here, such as the bizarre fuel line routing that does three sides of the bay to get where it needs to be, the back-to front and frankly scary-looking fan coupling and the spaghetti nightmare wiring of the fuse box. Although the latter, to be fair, has obviously been monkeyed with unsympathetically at some point. Unless Mazda were prone to using Scotchlocks at some point in their history.

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Tiny little four-barrel carb is soooooo sweet. Either Nikki or Hitachi were used, I believe, though I'm not sure which version this is

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Advisable to keep all digits and fleshy parts of anatomy well away from this odd and really quite alarming fan coupling when running!

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Twin dizzies add some proper Mazda old school charm to proceedings

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Apparently this is where you should add the 710, but I'm not sure quite what the number refers to

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Inside you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were peering into an Italian sportser of the same period and bearing in mind this car is only a year older than me (though it's undeniably worn a lot better) the level of equipment is truly impressive. Plenty of rival firms of much greater prestige than the then-humble Toyo Kogyo didn't offer this level of trim, finish, or instrumentation

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Note now-banned by Elf and Safe Tea legislation toggle switches for the horn on the dash, and for the antenna and excellent swivelling-ball mounted passenger map light

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wooden gearknob clearly once had an emblem on the top, now sadly missing. Wonder what it would have been, an enamel Mazda "M" maybe?

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Aftermarket cassette deck is still old enough to be an interesting period piece in its own right. Original Mazda radio still ensconced in the centre dash

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Quilted rear parcel shelf now also boasts aftermarket Clarion speaker units like all us cool kids had back in the day. Unsure if quilted finish is original, but certainly looks like it could be. Inspection panel to access fuel sender and suchlike

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Mystery bank of aftermarket switches added under the driver's side dash are marked in Japanese. And no-one's quite sure what it says or what they do. The one area that really lets this car down is the unsympathetically messed-around wiring, and it filled me with dread just looking at it. Glad I haven't got to trace random Japanese-labelled strangeness back to the electric shock-in-waiting fusebox!

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And that's really all I've got. Except to say thanks as always to Old One Racing for being such a gracious host, always good to catch up, and thanks again for letting us poke and pry around his latest patient.

Some say you should never meet your heroes, but given that this is the first chance I've had to spend proper time up close and personal with a Cosmo with a decent camera, it's fair to say I've come away with a greater love for them than ever before. The styling wouldn't disgrace an Italian carrozeria, the engineering would make any British firm proud in its heyday, and the visionary forward-thinking of those Mazda engineers who made an unworkable supercharger design into a production-ready version of the only new engine to come to market in the twentieth century still speaks across the decades as the amazing feat of graft, inspiration and pure bloody mindedness we all owe a great debt to

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Just for interest's sake, here are the photos I have from previous encounters. This may well be the same car.. Mazda might have simply borrowed it and stuck "COSMO" plates on it for the Festival of Speed. Infuriatingly, I forgot my camera on the Rotechnics open day so only have a few sketchy phone cam shots, and the Mazda stand wallahs wouldn't let us open any doors or bonnet on the FoS stand, so I've no interior or engine shots of that either. Soz, appears I suck

A few differences immediately leap out, though, such as the badging differences, the tail-light lenses, different front sidelights, cloth-insert seats instead of all-vinyl, and the side repeaters being of different shapes

Festival of Speed;

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Rotechnics;

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Thanks for looking in, hope you found something to like in here
Cheers, Nik

Very well written and with great pics!!!
Thanks for sharing Nik!

Great pictures! All cars appear to be the L10b model (series 2).

Those differences are peculiar, but likely just differences between the markets in which they were sold.

very cool!

Thanks for sharing! I've seen the 110S at Sevenstock...you're right, the car is a lot smaller than you'd think. I love the simple flat-panel dash.

Those toggle switches are marked from left to right: horn, hazard. The 3rd one is a mystery as any markings that might be there aren't visible in the pic.

fm

Nice article and man those cars are something else. A dream car for me, or than the 20b JC Cosmo. Thanks for the new wallpaper too.

Thanks for the positive waves, guys! I was reading Pierre Dieudonne's excellent book Never Stop Challenging charting the Mazda race effort up to the Jaguar-inherited Le Mans cars the other day. It goes into the original Cosmo race/rally cars... evidently Mazda had a noise abatement order slapped on them when they were proving the cars at Miyoshi testing ground owing to their 150 decibel exhausts. 150 decibels, Jesus! That's wayyyy beyond the pain threshold!

Thanks for that, I'll pass it on to the owner. Checked my photos and yup... completely failed to get a clear pic of the third switch. Doh