Norman Garrett (left), Vince Tidwell and Friend at Tech's Hon that bonded their friendship at Tech. During their student days, Garrett owned a Porsche and Tidwell a TR7. Both were members of the Georgia Tech Sports Car Club and both helped build a hydrogen car in 197980 in the national Student Competition on Relevant Engineering. Tidwell, who graduated in mechanical engineering in 1980, joined McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis. He returned to Atlanta, earned an MBA from Georgia State, and is a senior project engineer with Selmix/Alco. Garrett graduated in mechanical engineering in 1981 and went to work for Subaru. There he unsuccessfully tried to convince Subaru's management to build a sports car. "I had an MGA at the time and kept it at Subaru. Every time I would see an executive, I'd say, 'You fchow, we ought to build one of these.' I t'A
actually went so far as to sketch out a layout using the Subaru engine because it's a flat four-cylinder—very easy to adapt to a nice, low, sports car. But it didn't get past the watercooler conversation stage there." At Mazda, Bob Hall, a former automotive journalist who was product planner, had better success. 42
GKORGIA TECH • Winter '90
Garrett observes, "Lie's the guy that said, 'In 1979 MG sold 45,000 cars. In 1981 they sold zero. The market didn't go away, the car did.'" Mazda decided to let Hall unofficially explore the concept of building a British-style sports car. Garrett was hired on Aug. 1, 1983, as layout engineer. "At that time, they had done some sketches and they had done one preliminary clay model based on a very crude package of the old GLC rear-wheel-drive stationwagon," Garrett recalls. "It was a very off-line project. The difference between on-line and offline projects with Mazda is that offline means unofficial, not funded, but if you've got some time, you can go look at it. And that is really where some of the great ideas came from. "The Miata was a real opportunity for me because I had been a motorhead since the day I could read," Garrett adds. "I had always wanted to do a sports car. At the time I joined Mazda, I had owned about 30 cars, of which probably 20 had been English sports cars. Set when somebody said, 'Do a sports car,' it was a natural thing for me to say, 'That's
fire in its soul. the one thing I know how to do.'" In addition to Garrett ami Hall, the only other American inv< )lved with the Miata project at that stage was designer Mark Jordan, who is also a sports car enthusiast. "I feel that Bob, Mark anil I knew more about how to design s< >mething like the Miata than any other group," Garrett says. "Singularly, there were a lot of people who knew how to do that, but none of them worked together for a company that could build the thing." arrett spent about 10 percent of his time in Japan working with Mazda engineers. In all, some 75 key engineers and personnel, predominantly Japanese, were involved in the Miata project. "We had a sense of—I ley. this is a unique opportunity.' For me as an engineer, I knew I would have had to be 50 years old and have been at GM the whole time to have had that kind of influence on a car— to have the chief hard-design guys sitting across the table and listening to you Continued page 45