More News: The 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata

Mazda will officially announced the newly redesigned MX-5 Miata next week, on September 3rd. Although there is still one week before the reveal, some more information leaked out today.

The major news is that, the new MX-5’s design will take into consideration that a hardtop coupe will be made, during the lifespan of this generation of MX-5.

As you can see our in-depth review of the MX-5 Miata family’s design, the construction of the car frame has special treatment to address that typical problem in a convertible: lack of torsional rigidity in the car body. If the hardtop coupe model will be made for the new MX-5, and it does not share the same frame structure as the convertible model (which means it will be a typical unibody construction like all other sedan/coupe in the market), it will make the longitudinal beam that directly connects the front and rear sub frame be meaningless; this is because a normal coupe unibody alone is more than enough to provide strong torsional rigidity.

Therefore there are two possibilities:

1. The coupe model will be simply based on the convertible version, and the top (which is completely fixed and non-removable) is not a load-bearing structure;

2. The coupe model has its unique unibody design, and the longitudinal beam in the convertible model will be removed to save more weight.

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Below are two spy shots of the 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata.

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