Iv wondered what the mx5 would have been like with a fibre glass body.Although the mk1 is commendably light.Im sure the performance, and lack of rust would have given it a further edge.Ferrari in the 80s started off making the lovely 308 gtb in fibre glass, and then resorting to steel.Today the fireglass versions are the most sought after for lightness, and lack of rust.Over the years the steel 308s have had many millions of pounds spent on them restoring rusty bodys.Although rust isnt a major problem with even mk1s ,i think a fibreglass version would have been interesting!James
Replacing the removable panels with grp would save a few kgs - my carbon front wings are maybe 2kg lighter than standard (can’t be bothered to look up the weights in my project thread), so it’s not a dramatic weight saving, assuming Mazda kept the steel monocoque chassis and some kind of side impact protection in the doors.
If they’d used a steel space frame with GRP panels it’s be safe to assume the end result would have weighed as much as a TVR, so again, not a dramatic weight saving.
If they’d used a steel space frame with GRP panels and shrunk the car to make it tiny it would have weighed as little as an Caterham 21 (plus a bit because the Mazda engine is cast iron).
If they’d used a steel back bone chassis and GRP panels and shrunk the car to make it tiny it would have weighed as little as an early Elan.
In every case it would have cost more to make, and would still rust, it’d just rust where you can’t see it.
A good point in that it might have not weighed much less than the present bodies? .For purists every ounce counts though.By the way im not a purist, and was tottaly happy with the steel ,and auluminium body panels on the mk1,James
My experience with fibre glass cars has been flapping panels, star shaped stress marks and delamination.
TVRs had fiberglass bodies, but had a healthy appetite for rotting chassis (and outriggers), common to most cars like this (such as Lotus). Fiberglass Ferraris also rust, but they rust in far more structural areas (the supporting tubes) and in areas you can’t see. Ferrari had a useless production process; the steel bodies cars rusted because they were leaving shells lying around while the mechanics were built up. The same happened to those tube structures.
The Elan M100 would give an impression of what a fiberglass MX5 would be like. Lotus sunk $50 million into the development of that car, and construction of state of the art facilities, similar to what Mazda spent on the MX5.
Forget the 308; the fiberglass bodies were hand laid, and miserable to work with, with very little advantage in weight saving (a steel GTB is 25lbs heavier). Fiberglass 308s are only “sought after” because they are rare (ie. the same kind of OCD collecting that leads to people buying rotted out, bullet ridden militaria because its “rare”). People who buy 308s aren’t afraid of getting rust repaired, and fixing up crazed glassfiber (assuming the chassis isn’t a basket case) has its own complications. Ferrari fiberglass doesn’t have as much crazing problems as Lotus did, but thats because Ferrari laid the stuff on thick; hence the lack of a weight advantage.
The Elan was geared up for, in fiberglass terms, mass market; the shells could be popped out by the 1000, and reproducibly (which helped Kia). The reality is the Elan M100 is covered in wobbles and huge panel gaps, and plagued with the usual problem with electrics. In 1989, the Elan M100 probably represented the state of the art in mass car fiberglass manufacture. I doubt Mazda would have done any better as a first venture. In fact, given what happened to Mazda just 5 years later, it might have killed them off.
The Elan M100 didn’t really do anything better than the MX5, but it cost a lot more, and it is this car that more or less killed Lotus as an independent car manufacturer. Lessons were clearly learnt for the Elise, but again, this is a car that does cost quite a bit more than the MX5, and is sold in miniscule numbers by comparison.
Parallel to the MX5, Ford developed the Mercury Capri roadster, which used Mazda mechanics. It was fwd, and built in Australia, sold in the US.It had a reputation as a fun to drive car, but the body quality was appalling, with the doors being of different lengths. This was probably as a result of Ford trying to scale up a production process suitable for a boutique manufacturer, to that of mass production.
It is rather similar in appearance to the V705 engineering study (I hesitate to use the word prototype) that Mazda had built in the UK (in fiberglass) during the MX5 development.
If Mazda had went with fiberglass, a material it had virtually no experience in, I think the result would have been a 1989 Miata, that would be remembered as fun to drive, but with poor body quality, and poor starting reliability. The MX5 was introduced as a last minute decision for Europe (hence the ungainly rear foglight), but that decision probably wouldn’t have been taken because Mazda would be struggling in making the cars to an acceptable standard. Japanese car makers sold quite a few sporty cars in Japan and the US that never surfaced in Europe.
As a result, the Miata would have had a short service life, before being over taken in sales by the more reliable MR2 and Del Sol, and ended up forgotten like the Capri. Honda experimented with plastic fenders on early CRXs; these are easier to make than fiberglass. However, the plastics used weren’t particularly UV resistant, and so these cars can usually be spotted because the wings are both faded and cracked It would never have gone on to achieve the production records it made. Interesting if you define interesting as constantly chasing broken earths.
There isn’t anything remarkable in the design of the original MX5; I suppose the riskiest step was their decision to employ pressed steel wishbones. But what Mazda managed to do was to put together a well handling package, that was reasonably priced and daily driver reliable. A fiberglass MX5 wouldn’t have achieved that, and hence, it would have been a hopeless car.
If you want a fiberglass car with MX5 mechanics, I suggest you go have a look at the kit car forums. To give you a headstart, there was a version of the Sylva Fury with MX5 donor parts, the Cyana Phoenix (well, fiberglass body, aluminium tub).
Your space bar, spell checker and shift keys are still broken by the way.
So what was your beef about V8 MX5s?
I must say an excellent comphrehensive reply with great photos. I tend to agree that the mx5 was better off being mostly steel bodied, although there are many Lotuses with the galvanised chassis which are wearing well.
The collector Lotus I have is nearly 40 years old and the crazing is at a minimum, and still looking good over all. Fibreglass so no rust, a big saving over many steel bodied 70s and 80s classics, which have had to have many panels replaced due to rust.
,James
Thats not truabout thelotuses;many Elans have hadto hav aftermarket nonLotus chassisfitted because of rot;galvanizing isn’t a knewprocess, andLotus chose not to protect their cars, until faced withlancia-like complaints.Ittakes alot to completelyrite off asteel body becuz of rust, but when fiberglass starts delaminating, it is very hard to save the body.fiberglass (chopped bits of glass in a polyester resin) is such a primitive material. Its beenlong overtaken by better composites.keep it for boatsand caravans.Ifyou agreethat afiberglass mx5 is useless,Ydidyou ask?Or wereyou deliberatelybeing provocativ?Getover it;a jap car maker made abetter car than lotusever cud.Allthatpolishing of yourlotus,yet it stillwon’t start.4wheeled skip.Worthless.
Just for a bit of balance - from the S2 Elise on Lotus used a pressed composite sheet formed in tooling in much the same way as steel panels. It’s a much more consistent process, and gives more accurate and lighter panels. So not chopped strand mat and resin like Canoes and TVRs.
Also all modern Lotuses have aluminium chassis.
That doesn’t stop YELLOW’s car being a shed though. Let’s not lose focus on that.
I’dliketoknowtheanswertothattoo.
I think he’s trolling again, provoking a senseless debate, and still hasn’t fixed his keyboard or Lotus Wheeliebin.
Had a laugh at muppet calling my lotus a shed,hes in good company as my girfriend called it static scrap,mmm,James
For over 40 years my father was the fibreglass process controller at Lotus (basically, he was in charge of the fibreglass body construction and as a result was one of the worlds top experts in the subject. He would have had a hand in making your car Yellow). Lotus have always used cutting-edge technology and the most modern techniques available at the time and their fibreglass panels have always been as good as it gets (at the time). He was sent to Detroit a couple of times to help them set up their fibreglass production lines and also to Toyota who wanted to make the Land Cruiser roof out of fibreglass.
Despite this, he’d never have a fibreglass car himself. The panels might be close to being acurate at the time they are formed but often just the painting process is enough to make them change shape. Leave an old Lotus (like yours) in warm sunshine during the day and it’s often difficult to open/close the doors. The Lotus factory used to do a good line in replacing rotted chassis and that included the “galvanised” chassis. They didn’t use galvanised steel, they created a full chassis then dipped it so only the exposed areas were galvanised. They then welded on the brackets to hold the body on which of course burns off the gavanised finish and as we all know, welded sections always rust quicker than virgin metal. I also had a good friend who ran a garage that specialised in replacing rotted Lotus chassis with aftermarket replacements (they were no better than the Lotus chassis, just a lot cheaper).
I also worked at Lotus for a few years, my brother worked in the paint shop and as a fork-truck driver there for about 10 years and even my uncle worked there for a while in the early years in Norfolk. None of us have ever owned a Lotus. The only one I’d own now is an Elise and I’d do that knowing they still have problems with bodywork.
Most informative post. Thanks very much. I think that tells us why there never has been and hopefully never will be a fibreglass bodied MX 5
Lazza fanatstic to hear your families connection with working at lotus.lotuses where like the early ferraris when they are working they are a dream cars but the build quality was poor.No doubt your father met many times the great Colin chapman.The badge on my elite commemerates the many constructors titles the lotus team won in f1.Many teams today must be envious of its history.So lotus did something right,James
My father joined Lotus when they were still working from a lock-up in
North London and he moved with them up to Norfolk along with his brother
and their wives so he did work quite closely with CC for a while.
Lotus Cars however was only a passing interest to Colin Chapman. His passion was F1 racing and the car factory to him just helped to fund the F1 team. He was involved in the car company obviously and he was a bit of a genius when it cames to new engineering ideas (just as he was with his F1 cars). Everyone respected him but to be honest, few really liked him. If he’s looking down now he would be disgusted to see the Lotus Cars company being foreign owned, only being kept alive because of Lotus Engineering (world renowned automotive experts) and the F1 team just being a badge on a Renault. IMO I don’t think Lotus Cars has much of a future and will go the way of TVR before too long.
Believe me. Lotus cars in the late 80s & early 90s were about as badly made as is possible. The workforce were underpaid & overworked (when I was there in the very early 90s for example it was a basic 39 hour week but you had to work 44 hours. That mean you actually lost money if you were off sick or on holiday!) and the morale was really low. It was one of those places where everyone queued up to clock out so they could get away asap. If you were half way through a job you just left it as it was until the next day even if that meant leaving a half sprayed panel or part welded chassis over a weekend.
For a while I was in “Final Inspection” which involved looking cars over when they were finished and ready for delivery. Very few went through 1st time and most came back to us half a dozen times or more due to things being missing, not tightened, not fitting properly, poor paintwork, delaminated fibreglass etc. They even forgot thing like engine oil & brake fluid at times! Part of the job was to take the cars around the test track - not as much fun as you might expect as it involved going through a checklist to make sure everything was working. Once we were going down the main straight towards a right hander at about 120mph and the driver casually said to me “No brakes”. I started to note it down just as it dawned on me what he said. We went straight on at the corner, through a fence and a hedge and finished in a corn field. The driver then got out and started walking back. It took me a few minutes to gather myself before I too got out and started walking back. A fun story now but not fun at the time and illustrates the terrible workmanship at the time.
Anyway, most of that isn’t really relevant. A more relevant comment is to take a look around at other car manufacturers and see how many have used fibreglass bodies on mass produced cars and how many of those have been a long-term success. Personally I can’t think of any.
Just as a sidenote; when was the last time you heard anyone talk about a Caterham 21 as if it was anything but a myth 
Chevrolet Corvette did quite well Lazza Just thouht of another mass produced vehicle that lasted for years, wasn’t the Trabant fibreglass
Andy
To be fair though, the Corvette was never meant to be a mass production model. Initially it was a hand-made specialist model and when production increased they only stuck with fibreglass because American buyers wanted to stick with the tradition of fibreglass bodies otherwise they would have switched to pressed steel too.