About two weeks ago, I was on a plane in Minneapolis that touched down a bit later than scheduled. As soon as that seat belt light turned off, a line of anxious passengers with tight, some impossible, connections, smashed into the center aisle. Some would make it, some would not, and maybe if this odd Mazda concept from the 1990s made it to market, everyone would have made their flights.
In the early 1990s, Mazda was on a heater. The company's new MX-5 roadster was in high demand and, in 1991, it became the first Japanese automaker to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Mazda was at the forefront of innovations like the rotary engine, including one that was even hydrogen-powered.
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But what was next? What big idea could Mazda's masterful engineers sketch on a napkin next?
The company created an in-house competition, called Fantasyard, to challenge internal teams from various departments to come up with new modes of mobility, and one winner still has the industry asking, "What if...?"
The Suitcase Car was essentially a three-wheeled go-kart designed to make those close airport connections a little more manageable, maybe even a little more fun.
Created by seven Mazda engineers from the manual transmission testing and research unit, the idea received a small budget to create a physical prototype. So, the team bought a mini-motorcycle and a large Samsonite suitcase and went to work.
The mini-bike's 34-cubic-centimeter (cm3) two-stroke engine was installed into a 57 cm x 75 cm (22.4" x 29.5") suitcase that could reach nearly 19 mph.
Mazda says the final design "only took a minute to assemble." The user would swivel the front wheel into an upright position through a removable section of the case, insert the rear wheels, and attach the seat above the rear axle.
However, weighing 70.5 pounds, it wasn't the easiest bag to move around, and modern airport security would likely take issue with the gas-filled pull-start motor. But hey, I can think of, and have experienced, many worse ways to spend your time at an airport.
While the company greenlit the prototype, mass production was never on the table. Still, the Suitcase Car was a smash marketing hit, and Mazda made a couple more as promotional showstoppers.
The model made for the U.S. market is the only one that remains in existence. Mazda's original was "accidentally destroyed," and the disappearance of the one made for the European market remains a modern mystery.
While Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wisconsin, is "compact by design," enabling passengers to comfortably walk from one end of the terminal to the other in just a few minutes, Director of Marketing Michael Riechers says the suitcase car is a "fun example of the kind of creative thinking that pops up when people imagine how to make airport travel easier."
Riechers says the Suitcase Car "speaks to a time when designers were experimenting pretty freely with personal mobility ideas," like solving the last-mile problem with a 70-pound transforming suitcase.
The Suitcase Car is "still an entertaining concept to look back on, and it’s interesting to see how ideas like that foreshadow today’s conversations around mobility, electrification, and passenger convenience," Riechers adds, "even if most airports ultimately solve those challenges through layout and operations rather than gadgets."
Mazda began celebrating some of the automaker's most unexpected and unusual vehicles about five years ago, as part of its 100-year history. And props to the esteemed editors of Designboom for helping the story of this small engineering marvel take off.
