2026 Mazda RX-9 revealed in new renders! Local Mazda bosses excited by idea of rotary halo to vanquish the Toyota Supra, Ford Mustang, Nissan Z and BMW M2 in Australia

“The MX-5 is here to stay,” said Mazda Australia Managing Director Vinesh Bhindi before jumping into the subject of the Iconic SP concept car.

Despite being unconfirmed, a rotary-powered halo sports car seems almost inevitable, with myriad unconfirmed reports from well-placed Japanese sources and a lot of activity around the concept car, it will be a real shame if Mazda doesn’t put the Iconic SP into production.

“Yes there is that desire, that ambition, on that Iconic SP sports car, but it’s ambition at this stage and hopefully at a point down the road it can be realised. And it will be really exciting,” said Bhindi at the CX-80's international launch in Germany.

“When we talk to the senior executives in Japan they are using that language, which is fantastic. Whether it gets realised, how quickly, that’s not confirmed,” he added.

To speed things along, we’ve commissioned a set of renders from digital artist Thanos Pappas that show what a production version of the Iconic SP could look like, with more realistic wheels and door handles.

When CarsGuide pointed out Toyota’s latest sports car success, Bhindi was quick to remind us of Mazda’s rich heritage.

“We’ve shown that as well. We’ve had sports cars in our history for a very, very long time,” of course, he’s so right.

The MX-5 for a start, the iconic RX-7 (1978-2002) and more recently the 2003-’12 RX-8, a Le Mans 24 Hours win in 1991, the brutish third-gen Eunos Cosmo (1990-’96) and of course the gorgeously delicate original Cosmo (1967-’72).

“I’ve got to say, if you go to Mazda corporation in Hiroshima, in the front foyer, the [Iconic SP] is centre stage. I was there not that long ago – it’s on display, they’re teasing everybody,” he said, visibly excited about such a car.

“But again, it’ll be priorities. So right now, it’s the Large Platform roll-out that’s coming to its first phase conclusion.

“A lot of work is going into the battery EV, the scalable EV architecture … That’s a key priority for many markets including us. But somewhere in that, this thing — hopefully — is planned for,” said Bhindi.

Details of the Iconic SP remain shrouded in secrecy. Initially, it was thought to simply be a more potent version of the MX-30 R-EV’s powertrain, which develops 125kW and 260Nm and is more about efficiency than punch.

But patent documents from Japan instead reveal the ‘RX-9’ (or whatever it’s called) reveal a front-mid mounted twin-rotor combustion engine with a 25kW electric motor where the flywheel is found, according to Japanese publication BestCar.

This would see Mazda be able to use a transaxle transmission located on the rear axle, making an eight-speed auto like in the Large Product models or even six-speed manual transmission possible.

Additionally, the patents promise a pair of 17kW electric motors located on each front axle. This system is likely to give Mazda excellent torque vectoring capabilities — if it makes production — including the ability to drive an individual front wheel, or even use regenerative braking, to trim the Iconic SP’s line in a corner.

Total power is pinned at 260kW right now, while weight’s around 1350kg. Apparently production may start in 2026 with pricing below $75,000 in Japan. Sounds like the perfect Toyota Supra and Nissan Z crusher to us.