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Mazda's timing was perfect. In the late 1970s, British and Italian sports car makers were hanging by their fingernails, C3 Corvettes were aging ungracefully, Datsun's lovable Z-Car was evolving into the foppish 280ZX, and Porsche's 924 suffered from a hodgepodge of Volkswagen and Audi components. So the Mazda RX-7 that arrived in the spring of 1978 (as an early '79 model) was the answer to unspoken sports car dreams: it was attractive, fun to drive, and -- with a sticker as low as $6395 -- bargain priced. As a bonus, the RX-7 was powered by a rotary engine, which at the time was only one step down from a turbine as a source of wonder and amazement.

In late June, Mazda officially declared its Nagare design language dead after a brief brush with production. Now, Mazda has unveiled a new design theme with its Shinari concept, dubbed Kodo. Company executives also gave an indication of future platform and further development of the "Sky" powertrain.

With so much buzz about the Fiesta over the past year and a half, you'd almost forget that the car is actually a typical small hatchback. The engine isn't terribly powerful, although it has a 20-hp advantage over Mazda's mechanically similar Mazda 2. I'm looking forward to sampling the dual-clutch transmission on another Fiesta later this year, but I suspect that the manual transmission will still be the enthusiast's choice for the Fiesta.