AUTOMOBILES : To Mark Mazda Miata’s 5th Birthday, Roadsters Will Rule Roads in Irvine

The streets of Irvine are likely to be thronged with two-seat roadsters this Father’s Day as Mazda hosts a gathering of Miata owners at Mazda Research and Development, North America.

The Irvine design facility--housed in a bland concrete industrial building at Red Hill and Reynolds avenues--is the birthplace of the Miata, which reintroduced the open roadster to the United States in July, 1989.

Designers at the Mazda center in Irvine compete with designers at Mazda research centers in Germany and Japan for corporate attention to their projects. In recent years they have scored big. In addition to the Miata, Mazda’s MX-6 sports coupe, MPV minivan and RX-7 rotary engine sports car all took shape at the Orange County center.

Mazda officials said the roadster reunion, marking the fifth anniversary of the Miata, is by invitation only. The invitations were sent to several hundred Miata owners, who will be asked to work a bit during the day by attending clinics at which Mazda people will solicit their thoughts on proposed changes to the next generation of the Miata.