Mazda Museum & HQ
For a car guy, Hiroshima means Mazda, the brand’s home base and location for one of their main factories, the Ujina Plant. It’s where every Miata is built, and Mazda decided to take things a step further for enthusaists by creating a museum space that is attached to the factory. Come along and see some of the highlights from the tour.
This curated gallery was more approachable than the Nissan Heritage Collection. There were far fewer vehicles on display, yet each came with a nice space and lots of information about where it fits into the brand’s history. Iconic models, race cars, concept cars, and even phases of the production process were showcased. At the end of the tour, there was a viewing platform on the actual Ujina factory line, to see vehicles coming down for the middle stage of trim and chassis assembly (photos were not allowed in that area, but it was still very cool).
Two notables here were the Mazda RX-7 (FD generation) Spirit R in the exclusive Titanium Gray Metallic color, a car that I must have played countless times on arcades and Gran Turismo growing up. Then there was the Le Mans 1991 winning 787B, powered by a rotary engine. Not only does this car look much better in person than photos and videos suggest, but the museum’s guide was able to turn on an audio that had been recorded of the car on the race track to give visitors a feeling of what it would be like from the grand stands. Gives me goosebumps just thinking about the experience!
Photos taken with the Nikon Z9 and NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S II lens