The Mazda MX-5 is 35. Yes, the ultimate mid-life crisis car has itself hit middle-age, and Mazda has celebrated this momentous occasion by taking four of them on a long drive.
How long a drive?
1,000 miles, or 1,600km, to be metrically precise about it. From the tip of Cornwall - Land’s End - to the tip of Scotland - John O’Groats. The four cars completing the 1,000-mile drive were from the Mazda UK Heritage Fleet - a 1990 1.6-litre Mk1 from the car’s launch year, a 10th Anniversary Mk2, a 25th Anniversary Mk3 and a 30th Anniversary Mk4 - each one representing a key landmark in the MX-5’s history.
Does driving four cars across the UK really count as a celebration?
Well, there’s rather more to it than just the drive, you see. It’s also about how the four cars were powered. Mazda fuelled up the quartet of two-seat sports cars with synthetic petrol, which dramatically cuts their CO2 emissions.
Each generation Mazda MX-5 completed the journey using Sustain 100 RON E5, a second-generation biofuel from Coryton that contains zero fossil fuel and is manufactured from agricultural waste and by-products from crops that can’t be used for consumption. With no modifications to the cars required, the drop-in fuel utilises carbon that already exists in the atmosphere, which the plants absorb as they grow, recycling it, rather than releasing additional CO2, as fossil fuels do.
Along the way, the four cars dropped in at four locations which are pioneering ways to decarbonise road transport, including Bicester Heritage - where you’ll find Motor Spirit, one of the first distributors for the new Sustain bio-fuel - Sheffield University - where research is being carried out into hydrogen, bioenergy, carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), as well as renewables and the wider energy system - Windermere Boat Club - which has been using bio-fuels to power its racing boats - and Celtic Renewables and Caldic in Scotland - which is a pioneer in ‘green’ chemical development.
This sounds good. When can I buy some bio-fuel?
You already can. Sustain already has its Sustain Classic 80 renewable fuel on the market, although the stuff being used by Mazda isn’t for the public yet. It does seem to work, too - Mazda has been running its UK-based heritage fleet on the stuff since 2023, and in 2022, an MX-5 did a lap of one race track each in Scotland, Wales, and England to prove the fuel’s efficacy.
Does this mean Mazda’s giving up on electric cars?
No, but the company is keeping its options open by pursuing what it calls a ‘multi-fuel’ solution. Explaining, Jeremy Thomson, Managing Director at Mazda Motors UK, said: “The MX-5 is Mazda’s brand icon, and it embodies all that is great about our products. Mazda’s unceasing commitment to refining the vehicle over its 35-year history has always focused on its core mission of delivering driver engagement and fun from behind the wheel. It’s great that it was a quartet of MX-5s that became the first cars to drive this famous route using sustainable fuel, as it’s always been a sports car that delivers efficiency through its lightweight and compact design. Furthermore, it’s highly appropriate that a car famous for driver fun has highlighted the part sustainable fuel can have in de-carboninsing classic motoring in the future.
“Mazda is committed to reducing CO2 emissions from every car and believes that all options available must be used to achieve climate neutrality. In the future through Mazda’s Sky-Activ Multi-Solution Scalable Architecture, continued electrification will go hand in hand with the development of advanced internal combustion engine technology. While, with the wide use of Mazda M Hybrid mild-hybrid, the all-electric Mazda MX-30, the unique Mazda MX-30 R-EV parallel hybrid, the self-charging hybrid Mazda2 Hybrid and the plug-in hybrid Mazda CX-60 PHEV, across Mazda’s current range this multi-solution approach is already clear to see. In many regions of the world Mazda is investing in different projects and partnerships to promote the development and use of renewable fuels in cars. In Japan, Mazda is involved in several joint research projects and studies as part of an ongoing industry-academia-government collaboration to promote the wide-spread adoption of biofuels from microalgae growth and bio-diesel from used cooking oil, while in Europe, Mazda was the first OEM to join the eFuel Alliance.”
What’s next for bio-fuel?
David Richardson, Director at Sustain, said: “Achieving the first-ever drive from Land’s End to John O’ Groats on 100 per cent sustainable biofuel is something we’re extremely proud of. It’s particularly poignant to be teaming up with Mazda on the MX-5s 35th birthday. Sustainable fuel is a genuine way we can keep vehicles such as these on the road for many years to come, whilst reducing their environmental impact. Over the 1000-mile trip, we calculated that around 981kg of CO2 was saved by using Sustain in the four MX-5s to replace fossil fuels. Imagine the difference we could make if more motorists followed suit.
“Electric vehicles are increasing in numbers, but there are many millions of combustion engine cars on our roads - it surely makes sense to reduce the emissions from those vehicles if we can. Yet many people don’t realise it’s an option or know how sustainable fuel works. There are a lot of misunderstandings. We need support from those in power to enable sustainable fuel production to be scaled up, which could happen relatively quickly. There is no silver bullet solution to tackle the environmental impact of the automotive sector - we should be using all the available technologies to give us the best chance to make a real difference.”