It’s with the highest respect and deepest condolences we report the sad passing of Tsutomu Matano.

‘Tom’ Matano designer of the original Mazda MX5 was born on the 7th of October 1947 in Nagasaki, Japan.

In 1970, Tom moved to the United States to start a career in the automotive industry. In 1974, Tom joined General Motors and then moved to Australia to work for the Holden Design team.

In 1977, Tom joined BMW in Germany before moving back to the United States where he was appointed Chief Designer at Mazda in 1983. Tom’s collaboration with Bob Hall lead to the early designs for the Mazda MX5 and the rest is history.

I always design things truthfully to what they do and as simply as possible, based on proportion, attitude, light and shade to create a dynamic movement along carefully tuned visual weight distribution