You often get a lot of car brands falling short of understanding their customers, and failing to meet the desires and needs of their demographic. This is evident with the launch of the Ford Mustang II, AMC Pacer, or more recently the questionable Jaguar rebrand. However, Mazda knows their demographic like the back of their hand.

Rust and Mazdas are attracted to one another like people who can’t drive and BMWs. Mazdas practically come out of the factory with rust already corroding them away. Finding a Mazda MX-5 with no rust is a challenge on par with finding the bolt you dropped into your engine bay.

Therefore, Mazda is currently assessing the potential for commercialising its ‘Coating Corrosion Resistance Evaluation Service’ in a bid to battle the corrosion of its cars and components in other sectors.

Back in 2017, Mazda became the first automotive company to introduce practical evaluation technology that enables the rapid on-site assessment of the corrosion resistance of painted products.

Previously this procedure consisted of inducing rust over several months using specialised equipment, only to then visually inspect the component to determine the rate of deterioration. The mechanical equivalent of watching paint dry, quite literally.

However, Mazda’s recent advancements means that this procedure which previously took months, can now take a matter of minutes with their newly developed portable measuring instrument. But it can do more than just car components.

Mazda is aiming to offer this service to industries which extend beyond the automotive world, aiming to help reduce the environmental impacts of coating technologies and material developments. Mazda claims that these testing procedures would mean fewer prototype and retest cycles would be required, leading to a lower consumption of raw materials, in turn reducing environmental impacts across all sectors.

Maintenance is continually carried out at fixed intervals on bridges and transmission towers, regardless of their conditions, where implementing this technology would go a long way in enabling cognition-based maintenance, by allowing the coating’s status to be assessed.

Mazda will therefore be rolling out their proprietary technologies across the automotive industries and beyond, to help support business and local authorities in combating the corrosion of essential components. Where on the other hand petrol heads are just happy that it’ll now be a lot easier to find the MX-5 they want with no rust.

“Vintage Mazda Miata MX-5” by Lynn Friedman is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

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dan, boland, dan boland, mazda, rust, corrosion, technology, mustang, ii, amc, pacer, bmws, sector, automotive, component, infrastructure, development, future, mx-5, assess, bridge, transmission tower