Former car writer has dream job at Mazda R&D

True story: When Mazda engineer Dave Coleman was 10 years old, he announced that he wanted to work at Mazda. See, at about that time, his dad bought a 1983 Mazda RX-7, a car so overwhelmingly awesome to young Dave, he was hopelessly smitten with the entire brand.

“All the other kids, when you asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, they said all that astronaut/fireman crap. Not me.”

There were diversions along the way to his Mazda R&D destiny: He got an engineering degree, worked in the aftermarket and for Sport Compact Car magazine and started Eyesore Racing, the latter the most awesome LeMons team ever. But those were all just steps to him making the big time with Mazda in Irvine, Calif. At Sport Compact Car, he met a lot of car-company people and grew tired of fighting daily battles with the ad guys for editorial integrity. Eventually, he was ready to make the leap—it might have been to Nissan, since by then he'd owned Datsun 510s.

“I was kind of a Nissan guy, you could say,” said Coleman. “Datsuns and Nissans were awesome from 1970 to about 1990, but then they were [a word meaning not awesome].”

This was when Nissan refurbished ancient 240Zs and passed them off as sports cars to cover up that their cars at the time were (a word that means not awesome).

A position opened up at Mazda for something called “Product Excellence,” a sort of Ministry of Fun. It was perfect. So for the last 10-plus years, Coleman and a small squadron of Mazda Product Excellence compadres have worked to keep Mazdas fun. That includes the current Miata, with its stiffer suspension and repositioned roll centers; the second-generation Mazdaspeed 3 and its steering calibration, tires and suspension tuning; and any number of other products. Even the CX-5.

“The CX-5 had some weird handling quirks at pretty high speeds and high gs. It was nonlinear,” he said.

So Coleman and crew strapped a GoPro to the front of a Mazda 2 and used both to video-chase a CX-5 up Angeles Crest Highway. They showed the video, along with all their notes and suggestions, to Mazda in Japan. Then Japan said, “OK, make the changes.” Now when you drive a CX-5 at the limit, its response is linear, predictable and even, for a crossover SUV, fun.

But with power came responsibility.

“If they actually believe you,” Coleman said, “they might spend millions of dollars doing what you say, so you'd better be right.”

So far, he has been right; the result is that “zoom zoom” has been more than just an ad slogan.

This article originally appeared in the May 26 issue of Autoweek.

By Mark Vaughn