Car Wash:
Jo Stenuit and a Mazda6e

In Oberursel, a few kilometers outside Frankfurt, it’s pleasantly quiet. Behind red brick façades lies the Mazda Europe Design Center – almost like a campus, shielded from the city’s bustle visible on the horizon. It’s a place where ideas about lines, proportions and surfaces are given space to mature. Birds chirp, leaves rustle, clouds drift across the sky and cast moving shadows over the courtyard. Sunlight glances off the crisp curve of a fender, a cloud swallows the gleam along the hood. And then: a bucket of water, two sponges. Next to the Mazda6e, the brand’s first all-electric midsize sedan, stands Jo Stenuit, Design Director Mazda Motor Europe. The ramp car wash can begin.

Mr. Stenuit, Mazda never seems to chase trends. Is that true?

Absolutely. Our Kodo design philosophy – “Soul of Motion” – has informed our work for the past fifteen years. It’s not a fleeting trend but an attitude. Kodo means that every car has a soul, that it radiates motion even when it’s standing still. Our designers and clay modelers quite literally put their soul into every model. You can feel that immediately.

That sounds pretty spiritual for a car we’re pouring water over.

Yes – but that’s what it’s all about. When you open the door, the car shouldn’t bombard you with displays and effects. It should welcome you. Calm instead of sensory overload. A feeling like the unity of horse and rider – connected but never overwhelmed – what the Japanese call jinba ittai.

So the Mazda6e is all about deliberate reduction?

Exactly. Fewer buttons, clearer interfaces, intuitive operation. Though “intuitive” means something slightly different in Japan than in Europe. We spent a long time working on that to make sure it works for everyone.

Running the sponge over the body, you notice the lines aren’t just there for the eye.

That’s exactly the point. We sculpt in clay, we shape surfaces with our hands. A car shouldn’t just look good in a digital rendering on some screen – it has to play with light, have depth in shadow, and yes, you need to be able to feel it. Washing actually reveals the tension in the surfaces even better.

A car wash was the ultimate design check?

(Laughs) In a way, yes. When your hand glides over a surface and it feels right, then we’ve done our job well. Good design isn’t just visual – it speaks to all the senses: seeing, touch, even hearing when you close the door.

Mazda came to electrification rather late. Why?

We were cautious. Mazda is small compared to other manufacturers, and that is precisely why we have to explore other avenues. We build just under 1.2 million cars a year globally - that's a tenth of what Toyota or VW move. Our strength is that we can work in a more focussed way. No fifty derivatives, but a clear programme. The Mazda MX-30 was our first step and an experiment: how do customers react, how can the design of our DNA be combined with an electric drive? We are now taking the next step with the Mazda6e.

What sets it apart from other competitors?

Firstly, the technology: we offer two battery concepts - LFP for customers who value price-performance and NMC for range. The fact that the long-range version has a lower charging capacity is a conscious decision. We wanted to keep weight and thermal stability under control instead of just dazzling with big numbers. On the other hand ( ... ) 

→ Read the full story in ramp #69 "More Than Machines".