The Best Odds

SOMETIMES-NOT OFTEN, BUT sometimes-car manufacturers create something semi-wondrous that is also borderline irrational and three-quarters inexplicable to their own marketing types.

A Chevrolet Corvette masquerading as a Cadillac XLR, for instance.

A tiresome Pontiac LeMans that arose as a Woodward Avenue legend thanks to a would-be cocaine dealer. A British trucklet that deployed as a tractor after World War II and, once adorned in cowskins and bird's-eye maple, emerged as a status symbol for hedge-funders.

In the early '90s, every automobile that Mazda sold here-even its carlike MPV minivan-was a glittering ingot that we admired: the MX-5 Miata, the MX-6, the Protegé, the RX-7, the 323, the 626, the 929. Each sparkled in the niche it contested.

That Mazda was fearless could be proved with two words: Wankel rotary.

Yet the company offered a second bizarro powerplant that few remember.

That's because the number of Mazda MX-3s to scuff rubber in the U.S. roughly equals the number of Higgs bosons I can capture in a jar of Wild Turkey.