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This California rally is vintage Japanese car heaven

What's so good about the future? This is what I was thinking when some folks at Mazda invited me and a handful of other journalists to join them on the second-annual Touge California. It's a rally for classic Japanese cars that covers a huge chunk of Southern California's twistier roads, where fans get to test their beloved machines. Oh, and it attracts swarms of admirers with cameras. "It is not a race. It is a vintage touring rally," said Ben Hsu, editor in chief of Japanese Nostalgic Car, and one of the coordinators of the event. "In Japan, touge most definitely refers to racing, whether timed, in touge battles, or drifting antics. Touge California was created to give drivers of Japanese classics a taste, as close as possible, of the types of roads their cars were forged on." Touge California was created to give drivers of Japanese classics a taste, as close as possible, of the types of roads their cars were forged on. We started the day on a mundane stop-and-go freeway drive from Mazda's Irvine headquarters to Escondido, me riding shotgun with my journalist co-driver in a 2016 Miata. But Mazda also brought along three heritage products on this trip – a 1985 RX-7 GSL-SE, a 1978 GLC three-door hatchback, and a 1975 REPU (rotary engined pickup) – serving as reminders of the company's history in the U.S. The group of Mazdas was joined in Escondido by many more Mazdas. And Toyotas, Hondas, Datsuns – so many 240Zs – and the odd Subaru and Mitsubishi. In total, 28 cars were at the start line. "We doubled the field this year, and made the route longer – 200 versus 120 miles," Hsu said. "We separated the cars into two run groups based on speed and a mix of makes and models." I spent the first part of the rally in the Mazda pickup to get a taste of rotary power. It was my first experience behind the wheel of a Wankel-powered vehicle, my first time driving a small Japanese truck from the '70s, and my God that thing has a lot of power. I had a few scares when I had to stand on the brakes, and I found the shift throw's immense length disconcerting – it felt like third gear engaged somewhere in front of the dashboard, with fourth somewhere in the bed. The truck was a great introduction to the rotary, however, and to '70s Japanese cars. Especially in Southern California, old Japanese cars aren't as novel to casual observers as they might be in other parts of the country.

Flyin' Miata is building a V8-powered MX-5 ND

It's cold in many parts of the country, but this V8-swapped 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata that Flyin' Miata is developing has us dreaming about throwing on a parka and taking a very brisk drive. This beast is the product of the talented folks at Flyin' Miata, but we can't get too excited just yet. According to the company's brief Facebook post, this is just a dummy V8, placed under the Miata's hood to confirm fit. Judging by the photo, the engine fits like a glove. "There's still a long way to go before this is a real thing," Flyin' Miata writes, but the company admits everything looks "very promising" so far. The post doesn't mention any details about the estimated specs, but Autoblog reached out to Flyin' Miata for more information about this intriguing build. Keith Tanner, one of the mad scientists who shoehorns V8s into Miatas at the Colorado outfit, told us that Flyin' Miata is looking at both the LS3, which will provide between 430 and 525 hp, and the LT1 which is 460 hp out of the box. A supercharged LT4 is also being considered, but as Tanner put it, "that might be a little nuts" in a car as light as the ND. In any of these engine configurations, Tanner estimates the V8-swapped ND should comfortably be a sub-4 second to 60 mph car. The transmission will be a Tremec T56 Magnum six-speed manual. The suspension, brakes, fuel system, cooling system, and the chassis itself will all be beefed up to handle the power, as per normal FM practice. The one question mark is the rear end, as the ND's existing one simply won't be up to the task of putting that much horsepower to the ground. The 2016 Miata was one of the best cars we drove in 2015, but Flyin' Miata knows how to turn a standard MX-5 into an absolute hotrod with the company's LS3 V8 conversions for earlier models. Imagining the more modern chassis from the latest generation with a massive dollop of more power is an exciting thought. We can't wait to see how this project turns out. Related Video:

Sweating the small stuff | 2017 Mazda CX-5 First Drive

The 2017 Mazda CX-5's door handles got their own design study. They got their own graphs, maths, and a team of people scientifically analyzing how humans interact with them. There was a whole to-do. And yet, you look at them back-to-back with their predecessors, a Spockian eyebrow reaching to the stars, and wonder what all the fuss was about. But apparently they're better. They're also perfectly illustrative of the entire effort to re-engineer and improve Mazda's best-selling model. At first, the 2017 Mazda CX-5 seems like a sensible evolution of its well-loved predecessor – there's sexier styling, a more premium cabin, and additional features, but the dimensions and engine specs look awfully similar. It certainly looks like one of those "the old car's great, let's not overthink the new one" redesigns. Except it isn't. Dig deeper and you'll see just how much meticulous work – from the door handles to the throttle response – went into making the new CX-5 a crossover that thoroughly trounces the majority of its competition. Take the efforts to make it quieter. According to Mazda's internal measurements, the sound-quelling improvements made for the CX-5's 2016 refresh already made it one of the quietest compact SUVs on the market. That apparently wasn't good enough. To what seems like an absurd degree, Mazda's engineers obsessively examined every nook, cranny, corner, and crevice to sniff out noise and eliminate it. Gaps were filled, insulation was injected, seals were added, air was redirected, glass was double glazed, and carpet replaced plastic coverings. It would seem that the Society of Persnickety Engineers is well represented at Mazda HQ. "I'm not sure how they found some of these," said Mazda vehicle development engineer Dave Coleman with a shake of his head, almost amused by the obsession and dedication of his colleagues across the proverbial hall in the sound-deadening department. (He goes over many of their enhancements in the video below.) And it worked. The new CX-5 is indeed incredibly quiet, even on San Diego's notoriously loud corrugated concrete freeways. It is quiet for a Mazda – a brand previously known for the exact opposite – and the entire segment. Even the fairly quiet 2017 Honda CR-V we drove on the same freeways on the way to San Diego couldn't match it. Actually, much of the driving experience can't be matched by a competitor.