For some reason or another, interiors of vehicles are never quite as impressive as the exterior. Where the designer seems to go wild on the outside with design languages that only they can understand, the inside always seem to follow a formula with minimal variations. There’s still a dashboard, a centre console and a transmission tunnel that exists on the same large flat plane. Uninspired much?
It is surprising, especially when you think about the hours spent inside your car, that someone would have taken the time to make this moving living space pleasant. No wonder why there aren’t many people who greet ‘good morning’ when entering the office — it’s just ‘mrrrng’ now. Understandably, there are certain things in the car that cannot be moved but can’t they at least make it look and feel better?
With that said, the new Mazda MX-30 may be on to something.
Mazda, the only car manufacturer that seems to break the mould without actually breaking it, have designed an interior that’s genuinely interesting to look at. They are still very much on track with the ‘less is more’ philosophy, although it seems that more have been taken away from Mazda’s newest EV. The catchphrase here is ‘value of openness’, which pretty much sums up what Mazda is aiming for.
This ‘value of openness’ couldn’t be made possible if not for the freestyle doors. Sans the B-pillars and the doors fully opened, the border between the inside and outside dissolves and merge into living space. And yet, this isn’t the main point.
The real focus here is the centre console that, with the use of little imagination, appears to resemble a zen fountain. Short of accusing Mazda’s designers of stealing such a water feature, the inspired design seems to flow from top to bottom — the only thing that’s missing is the water.
Just look at the way that the top display panel disappears into the dashboard only to reappear under the vents. Then, it continues to flow past the gear selector and the Mazda Commander Control. From there, the flow falls to the console tray and ends in another more significant, deeper console tray closer to the floor.
Perhaps, it is also worth mentioning that the materials used inside the Mazda MX-30 are eco-friendly and sustainable. After all, what’s the point of going for a zero-emission vehicle if you’re not going to shrink your carbon footprint.
For instance, the wood panels for the console trays are made from cork peeled from the cork oak bark every 8 to 10 years; peeled, not felled. And before you think that the trees are rare, they are actually found abundantly in Hiroshima. And the fabric of the seats and door trim are made from fibres spun from recycled plastic bottles.
The Mazda MX-30 has a ‘feel-good’ kind of interior. It sure looks nice in pictures, but we can only wonder how the interior ultimately will feel. Needless to say, there’s only a very slim to no chance that the MX-30 will ever make it here. Which means, we can only hope that we can see something like this in future Mazdas. In the meantime, we only have pictures to drool at.
