The Mazda MX-5 has done more for motoring than you probably know heres why - ContractHireAndLeasing.com

Some will argue about the occasional car’s inclusion and why the Ford Model T is more important than the Audi quattro, but these are the arguments of respective fans of each car. One car that is less likely to appear in any such list is the Mazda MX-5. This is a gross oversight and not just because the MX-5 reignited the whole sports car genre. After all, without the simple little Mazda roadster, we may well have not seen the MGF, Porsche Boxster , BMW Z4 , Mercedes SLK and even the Lotus Elise, often cited as a game-changing car. The idea for the Mazda MX-5 dates back as far as 1976, when American motoring journalist Bob Hall mooted the idea to Kenichi Yamamoto and Gai Arai, two senior executives at the Japanese firm. Given the global mood was swinging away from traditional open-top roadsters, it’s perhaps no surprise it took Mazda 13 years to bring the MX-5 to fruition. All through the late 1970s, there was a growing feeling that open-top cars would be banned on safety grounds in the USA. The Cipher was a neat design and showed the British sports car could have a future while complying with safety regulations. Source: www.contracthireandleasing.com