The evolution of Kodo

Car companies each have their pet design language. Ford had Kinetic Design, Hyundai has Fluidic Sculpture, and Mazda has Kodo.

But Kodo is just the latest styling theme from Mazda.

During the years between 2006 and 2010, Mazda built show cars based around the 'Nagare' theme, named for the 2006 concept car of the same name. Nagare is the Japanese word for 'wind', and all subsequent show cars prior to Kodo's introduction with the Shinari design study in 2010 were considered 'Nagare' designs. The Kiyora concept from six years ago was the last of that line. It was based around the idea of flowing water – more or less in concert with the theme of airflow and wind central to other Nagare concept cars from the same period. But Kiyora was the final iteration of that particular design language.

To understand the gulf that separates Nagare and Kodo, consider the smiley-faced look of the second-generation Mazda2 and the 'muscular haunches' of the current Mazda6.

The year the Nagare show car surfaced was around the same time as the manufacturer appointed Dutch native Laurens van den Acker to be Mazda's global head of design. Van den Acker, who has since gone on to head up design at Renault, visited Australia near the end of 2008 and showed a room filled with journalists a preview of Mazda's global range for 2015 – based on the anticipated evolution of Nagare.

In hindsight, that computer-generated rendering of the full Mazda range seven years in the future was a far cry from today's reality. Preliminary work on the SUV that would come to be known as the CX-5 had already begun, and van den Acker's Powerpoint slide marked out a future that would never come to pass.

This much was confirmed by Mazda's Chief Designer for the CX-5, Akira Tamatani – out here for the launch of the revised CX-5 for 2015.

Where Nagare was a visual representation of wind – or any fluid substance in motion – "the concept was slightly different" for Kodo, the Mazda style chief explained.

"Kodo draws its power from the inside," he told motoring.com.au earlier this week. This is why any Kodo-design vehicle is associated with an animal – such as the cheetah in the CX-5 TV commercials for instance.

While, to a lay person, the two design languages seem mutually exclusive, Tamatani-san sees Kodo as a migration from the Nagare principle, to an extent.

"The concept of natural beauty has remained," he said.

Kodo's 'animalism within' seems to be an adjunct to the SKYACTIV drivetrain technology incorporated within each model. Given the left-field engineering philosophy of SKYACTIV, it was important that Mazda's design and engineering teams work very closely together on each new project.

One of the major factors in this philosophy is the 4-2-1 exhaust manifold and the inclined engine mounting. Mazda has seen fuel efficiency benefits derived from exhaust flow and cleaner aerodynamics by designing cars this way – which is in conflict with traditional design criteria that places packaging efficiency near the top of the agenda.

According to Tamatani-san, one of the benefits of this thinking comes in the form of front-wheel drive cars like the Mazda6, with rear-wheel drive proportions. There's less front overhang for the mid-size sedan. And the 'pouncing feline' looks of the Mazda6 kind of dovetail – so to speak – with those quasi-RWD proportions.

A problem that it presents Mazda is that Kodo as it stands won't lend itself to drivetrain or platform sharing, which would bring in added revenue for the company.

Only the MX-5 – the sole rear-wheel drive passenger vehicle in the range, and therefore the only Mazda with a longitudinal engine mounting – could be shared with another company. Even then, as the upcoming Fiat Barchetta, it will be built by Mazda and the platform won't be shared with Fiat in the same way that Mercedes-Benz shares its MQB platform with Nissan and Renault for unique models built by those companies and a subsidiary like Infiniti.

Kodo appears to have some years ahead of it before Mazda moves to another design language. What that will be remains "unclear", according to Tamatani-san. Staff from the various Mazda design centres around the world – Hiroshima, Irvine, Frankfurt and Yokohama (soon to close) – gather twice a year for a design seminar.

To date, there's no apparent consensus on the heir to Kodo. Although Tamatani-san was reluctant to discuss the future any further, word around the traps is that a successor to Kodo may be contingent on the company's financial standing – whatever that will be, as far away as five or six years from now.