FUCHU— Mazda has invited Bald Tires to attend a demo of their new SkyActiv Engine technology at their headquarters in Japan. We hopped on a plane, and headed across the Pacific to inspect their new technology.

We were seated in a room with a new SkyActiv engine cutaway placed in the middle, and a marketing executive began to speak.

“At Mazda, we have decided to try some truly innovative, unique, and frankly pretty strange solutions to try to squeeze efficiency out of the internal combustion engine.”

What sort of things are they doing? Well, they showed us.

“The compression ratio is like 40:1.”

“It’s also like a diesel, but not really. It is kinda, though.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and unfolded a note.

“They just told me to tell you guys that all this weird shit works good, and we can’t do another rotary.”

He paused for a moment and looked at the engine cutaway.

“Look at this massive divot in the middle of the piston. Looks like Crater Lake without the water. Weird right?”

He looked at the note again.

“Also there’s not gonna be a MazdaSpeed Miata.”