Ikuo Maeda, Mazda Head of Global Design

For fans of auto design history, the 13-minute mini-documentary below is well worth a watch. Called "The Shape of Time: The Italian Influence on Mazda Design," it comes on the heels of Mazda having one of their concept cars, the MX-81, restored in Italy, and tells a story I'd never heard before.

The story goes that a Japanese automotive writer, Hideyuki Miyakawa, traveled to the Turin Auto Show in 1960.

While there he met executives from Bertone and a young Giorgetto Giugiaro, and helped broker an Italian link to Mazda that wound up resonating through the Japanese auto industry and still influences it today. (Currently on the homepage of Italdesign's website: The Nissan GT-R 50 they designed.)

In the doc we hear from Miyakawa, Giugiaro, original Miata engineer Nobuhiro Yamamoto and others. You'll need to turn the subtitles on (and yes, Miyakawa's speaking Italian--after arriving in Italy in 1960, he never left).

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