Archive Dive: Mazda No. 5

A piece on what's missing from America's "scale ladder" when it comes to vehicles

This is a piece I originally wrote in 2023 after coming back from a vacation in Sicily. I had been thinking about the discontinuation of small, “entry-level” or “starter” cars in the America market, and then I had seen small trucks of all sorts in Sicily, adapted for tight urban spaces.

The Mazda 5 was an American consumer vehicle discontinued in 2015 wh…