Mazda Pushes Kodo Design Forward with New CX-30
Photo: Mazda
Over the past five years or so, Mazda has risen from a reputation of making cool, good-looking vehicles to making cars and SUVs that are extra good-looking, enough so that it’s started believably pushing itself as an affordable luxury brand. The latest addition to the lineup, the 2020 Mazda CX-30, further advances the Kodo: Soul of Motion design philosophy with what Mazda calls the Sleek & Bold concept.
According to Mazda, Sleek & Bold design does pretty much what the name suggests by finding a middle ground between the “supple, flowing beauty” of a coupe and the requisite ruggedness of an SUV. To achieve this, designers employed the idea of Charge and Release, which posits the profile of the CX-30 as a brush stroke where the energy is released at the back of the vehicle, creating the idea of forward motion even at rest. This is supported by the rear window, which slopes downward and outward to finish the look of one seamless stroke.
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S-Curves and Clever Cladding
Photo: Mazda
One of the biggest design elements of the CX-30 is the S-curve in the body sides, which takes advantage of light and shadow to change the way it looks at different times of the day and in different settings. With black lower cladding that encompasses the entire vehicle, Mazda emphasizes that S-curve and Charge and Release profile while playing into the sleekness part of the Sleek & Bold design scheme.
“At first glance, this appears to be quite a simple design,” said Yuta Takanashi, lead clay modeler at Mazda. “However, the body sides give off a completely different look depending on the angle from which you look at them, the surrounding environment, and the weather, making it an endlessly appealing design that you never tire of looking at.”
With all the design philosophies Mazda has floating around, it certainly hits that luxury brand metric for fluff. More importantly, the 2020 Mazda CX-30 looks the part of a premium crossover even with a price that’s much more widely appealing.
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The Design of the New Mazda CX-30
Kyle S. Johnson lives in Cincinnati, a city known by many as “the Cincinnati of Southwest Ohio.” He enjoys professional wrestling, Halloween, and also other things. He has been writing for a while, and he plans to continue to write well into the future. See more articles by Kyle.