Mazda's factory museum has some absolute beauties

The tour begins in the lobby of Mazda's corporate headquarters. They're about half an hour outside of Hiroshima, Japan.

For the full story behind the tour, check out RX-7, Miata and more: A tour of Mazda's factory museum.

A (rather grainy, sorry) sampling of Mazda's current lineup, as an intro to its past.

Who doesn't love a map? This shows the odd layout of the Mazda facility. On the right side of the river, there's a sliver of gray. That's one part. Then the entire lower area in the middle is the other.

The Cosmo Sport was Mazda's first car using the Wankel rotary engine, setting off a multi-decade love of the engine type. In the background you can see the tail of a Miata.

The Sport has a decided '60s sci-fi look to me, and I can only imagine how it looked on the road compared to the more mundane cars of the day.

Mazda's first vehicle, however, was the Type TCS trike, or Mazdago.

It wasn't until the early 60s Mazda made its first car, the R360 on the right, which led to many others. The gold model is the 1963 P600 Carol.

The tiny (less than 10 feet long) R360 still manages to fit four seats, and has a rear-mounted V2 with 16 horsepower.

Even into the 1970s Mazda was still making inexpensive three-wheeled trucks, the design that gave it its start. This is a 1971 T2000.

By the late 1960s Mazda was in full swing, working on a growing line of cars with piston engines and available rotaries. On the right, a 1968 Familia and a Bongo on the left.

This is a 1969 Rotary Luce, a very rare car and Mazda's only front-engine rotary.

A first-gen Savanna RX-7 in resplendant green.

The engine is located behind the front wheels in a "front midship" layout. This gives the car a 50:50 weight distribution. Horsepower is around 130 from the two-rotor engine.

Why don't cars have plaid interiors anymore? I'd love this. Is that just me?

As elsewhere in the car industry, Mazda's cars got bigger in the '70s. The Cosmo AP also passed Japan's new anti-pollution laws. The white convertible is a 1988 Familia Cabriolet.

Also known as the RX-5, the Cosmo AP had a two-rotor 133 hp engine. There was also a version with a traditional piston engine, which used to be fairly common Mazda practice.

The Eunos Cosmo, a big, expensive, fast coupe.

The available 2.0-liter, three-rotor engine produced over 276 hp thanks to twin turbos.

The tiny AZ-1 is quite an oddball. It's a Kei car. Most cars that fit that description are eco- and price-friendly commuter cars. This one is a mid-engine sports car.

Maybe "sports car" is a bit of a stretch, given its three-cylinder 0.66-liter engine and thundering 63 hp.

The AZ-1 was one of the few cars that came with gullwing doors.

It was never sold in the States, which is a bummer because I'd absolutely buy one now.

Mazda is the only Japanese manufacturer to win Le Mans, and it did so with this 787B.

A few of the different rotary engines from Mazda's past, ranging from the one from the Cosmo Sport to the more recent turbo and Renesis models.

A rotary spread into its component pieces. This is a helpful video (with only slightly annoying music) that shows how they work.

Despite extensive use of computers for all aspects of automobile design, Mazda still builds models out of clay to see how they'll look in the real world.

Even the interior is crafted ahead of time.

I assume this helpful sign is telling me not to touch the displays so I don't get hurt. But for a second I wondered if it was intended to protect the display.

Mazda's energy efficient technologies, marketed as "SkyActiv," include transmissions, lighter parts, more fuel efficient engines and so on.

Just the naked chassis. An odd and somehow disquieting sight.

Speaking of disquieting, here's how a post-crash test SUV looks. It's pretty amazing to see much better cars and trucks are at crumpling now than they used to be.

This was an interesting display, though I didn't have much time to see it. It shows how a lump of metal transforms into various parts of the engine and car.

Like here, a flat piece gets stamped into a rough cutout, which is stamped again into a more 3D shape.

That shape gets formed further to become the side of the car.

If you had any doubt that cars are mobile computers, check out all the wires required just to get the dash and HVAC to work.

No pictures are allowed on our brief tour of the factory itself. Interestingly, Mazda uses a mixed assembly line. So there's a Miata followed by a CX-5 followed by another Miata and so on. In the section I saw, humans were doing most of the assembly and installation while robot-controlled machines and trolleys kept them supplied with parts.

As part of a tech demo, Mazda recently showed off a rotary engine powered by hydrogen. A cool idea, and one that only has water as a byproduct. But this has been "a few years away" for years now.

In case you couldn't guess, this was the 10,000,000th car to roll off the assembly line here at the Hofu plant.

As the tour wrapped up, there was another chance to check out its current models. Not sure I'd trade my 914 for a Miata, but they're pretty slick.

The tour was short but impressive. I just wish I'd had more time with the classic cars. Anyone in Japan want to send me an AZ-1?

For the full story behind the tour, check out RX-7, Miata and more: A tour of Mazda's factory museum.