The 2002 Mazda Millenia S Is a Ghost from Japan’s Bubble Era of Wild Over-Engineering

All Mazda Millenias have had a strange life, this one in particular. A decontented, almost but not quite-Bubble Era car sold on a friends and family discount to a Ford family sick of the Blue Oval. It’s a car meant for a stillborn company, with no future and barely a past. In Japan’s booming bubble economy of the 1980s, Mazda planned an impossibly ambitious luxury brand called Amati. In those days, no project could be too grand, no car too over-engineered. So of course Amati was to have a V12 flagship, a super luxury sedan meant to take on cars like the Lexus LS400. When the Japanese economy collapsed in the early ‘90s, that Bubble Era flagship got cancelled, along with the Amati name altogether. But Amati wasn’t just one car; it was a whole lineup, and a few of the models planned for Amati badging snuck into production. The Millenia was one of them. While the name Amati may be long forgotten, there are still some remnants rolling around America, shades of what the ambitious luxury car maker could have been. This practically perfect Mazda Millenia S is as close as I’ve ever gotten to Bubble Era bliss. I… Read full this story

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