2015 Tokyo Motor Show: Visiting the Mazda Museum, Hiroshima

Once the press preview days at the Tokyo Motor Show closed and the public started coming through the door, Mazda invited journalists to visit their international headquarters in Hiroshima, home of the automaker’s main manufacturing facility and the home of their own automotive museum.

The Mazda Museum is open to the public by appointment and offers prime specimens from throughout the car builder’s history.

Also: 2015 Tokyo Motor Show: Designing the Mazda RX Vision

From the first three-wheeled truck built in the early 1940s to the immensely popular MX-5, the museum offers visitors a chance to examine not just Mazda’s most popular models, but also cars that sold well in Japan and elsewhere without finding their way into the U.S.

The venue also documents the creation and evolution of Mazda’s once signature power plant, the Rotary Engine. Abandoning the piston system to create internal combustion, the Wankle system uses a central, offset, three corner rotor that created the classic “suck, squeeze, bang, blow” process of driving an engine.

Gearhead visitors can spend a pleasant couple of hours at the Mazda Museum. If you join them, make sure you make it through while the gift shop is still open.

If you can’t make it 20,000 miles or so over to Japan, you can check out some highlights from the museum below.

All photos by John Scott Lewinski
TRENDING
No content yet. Check back later!