Photo: jonsibal / Instagram
Just like AI chatbots like to package the so-called truth as if they’re politicians but if you’re a little educated, you can see right through their façade, Mazda actually needs to claw back to a positive performance during the final quarter of the year to come out of the woods. That’s because year-to-date sales totaled 310,268 units, which is actually almost three percent less than during the first nine months of last year.
Anyway, they’re doing okay with some of their older models, revealing that it’s sometimes better to play with your old toys rather than give in to the latest marketing stunts from those who want to sell you more expensive things. They’re a good example: the tried-and-true Mazda3 series jumped over 42% during the nine-month period, the MX-5 Miata was also up by more than 4%, and the CX-50 rose almost 20%, breathing down the neck of the all-new CX-5 by less than 1k units!
Meanwhile, the newer CX-70 and CX-90 are both down more than 21% compared to last year, and the latest rumor across the mill says that Mazda is ready to retire the CX-70 from the US market in 2027, with the two-row CX-90 taking over in its place. As such, are we surprised that even the members of the imaginative guild of digital car content creators have stopped dwelling across the parallel universes of vehicular CGI to take a virtual look at the older Mazdas?
Influential automotive virtual artist Jon Sibal, titled “jonsibal” on social media, usually plays with Japanese-style cars, so we’re not surprised at all that he is thinking that now is maybe the perfect time to play with a CGI MX-5 Miata, showcasing his latest unofficial, hypothetical design project as if he’s ready to embark on a trial to reach the starting roster of the 2027 edition of the iconic Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, which next year is celebrating its 105th edition.
Of course, that’s not necessarily the target, as the author himself explains.
Instead, his “slightly modified” Miata ND (the model code for the fourth iteration) is actually a widebody, slammed version of the affordable sports car inspired by the JGTC competition – aka All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship, a grand touring car racing series created in 1993 and originally named the Zen Nihon GT Senshuken, which then changed to Super GT in 2005.
By the way, he says that he’s still working on “a few more details but should be done with it soon,” so we might see additional variants of the bonkers project soon enough. No worries, we’ll keep you posted!
