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Re: Was a 1955 Caribbean modified to make a 1956 Caribbean prototype?
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Home away from home
 
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No problem at all. I was also very pleased to meet you in person!
Posted on: 1/19 18:41
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Re: Was a 1955 Caribbean modified to make a 1956 Caribbean prototype?
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Home away from home
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Hello, If one works in the car business long enough (and heaven knows I did), one quickly finds so many things and people are somehow interlinked– one way or another. A magic aspect of the business. At least, that's how it used to be. The name of that concept car was the "M-Speedster." It is shown in its original colors and format– which unfortunately, sadly have been changed (read RUINED) since. While this has been so easily forgotten (with so many today busy taking and receiving credit for Miata– including folks who were never there), I originally suggested the color based on a 1950s Murray bicycle hue. It was originally known at Murray as "Flamboyant Black Cherry." It was my favorite color in the 1950s and was around BEFORE car people started crowing about "Candy Apple Red"... which basically ORIGINALLY looked just like a slightly lighter shade of Flamboyant Black Cherry. NOT like opaque standard red or "Fire Engine Red" as people today seem to believe. Or like the drab red that FoMoCo was once calling "Candy Apple Red" (it was neither translucent nor anywhere near the right hue). Ask 50 people today what "Candy Apple Red" looks like and you'll get 50 different answers. Some people have come to imagine that ANY red or bright red is "Candy Apple Red." How this happened over the years is anybody's guess. But it is a good example of why the internet and jargon tend to stray wildly from facts– as they once were. One has to be old enough to actually remember what real American candy apples once looked like! YES. And yesssss... if the name "Murray" seems familiar to Packard fans... the company that made the Murray bicycle line was an offshoot of the old Murray Auto Body Company. Yes... THAT Murray. And this leads back to Packard Motor Car Company. Yes, again. Anyway, the Mazda Miata M-Speedster concept was largely the design of Mr. Wu-Huang Chin– a brilliant designer who now lives in Taiwan. Others in the Mazda R&D (North America) Design Department (in Irvine, CA) at the time were as follows: • Mark Jordan (talented son of GM's famous Chuck Jordan) • Tom Matano (who some may have met on the PAC Packard National Meet tour at the Academy of Art school in San Francisco) • Tom Beaubien (a good friend and former Packard Styling employee who was one of the original builders the scale model of Packard Predictor) I worked with these immensely talented gentlemen for nearly twenty years and consider them all friends. Sadly, Mr. Beaubien passed some time ago. But you can read about his contribution to the Packard Predictor concept car in the story I wrote for The Packard Cormorant magazine, as published a few years ago by The Packard Club. Mr. Beaubien's family was such a part of Detroit that one of the old main streets there still bears the Beaubien name. An immensely talented guy from a solid old Detroit family. Now. This all said... I'm betting that absolutely none of you (or other Mazda fans on the internet) ever saw this one! And no, the image is definitely not Photoshopped. The future arrived... a long, long time ago... and some of us humans were actually there– as incredible as this may seem... 
Posted on: 1/19 19:26
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