WHEN they introduced the Mazda 3 sedan and four-door hatchback-cum-wagon in 2003, the Mazda people had a spiel that went something like this: “The kids these days! They want everything! They’re paying 16 grand but they want a mini-Mercedes, so that’s what we have to give them. Even though, back in our day, entry-level cars had cardboard steering wheels, and if you wanted a sunroof you had to wait for a rust hole to form above your head — which usually took only a couple of weeks.”

The basic Mazda 3 really does offer everything you’d reasonably need in a daily driver: tasteful, high-quality interior design and materials; plenty of space; and high-end options like a Bose stereo and a navigation system.

The 3 is based on the same platform as the Volvo S40, and it drives like a more expensive car; quiet and refined on the highway, composed and willing on twisty roads. When people tell me they’ve bought a Mazda 3, I congratulate them heartily.

The stock 3, even with its wimpiest engine, is a car that encourages enthusiastic driving. In fact, a couple of years ago I was banned from the test-drive area at a Mazda Rev It Up autocross event when I got a bit too frisky with a 3 sedan and committed flagrant orange-cone-icide.

So it was with no little glee that I took the keys to a 2007 Mazdaspeed 3, which is not only the most powerful version of the 3, but, with a top speed of more than 150 m.p.h., the fastest car Mazda makes, period.

The Mazdaspeed 3 is built on the hatch/wagon version of the 3′s platform, and retains all the usefulness of that configuration. The visual signifiers of its abilities are subtle — most of the front sheet metal has been reworked to accommodate the breathing and cooling demands of the direct-injection turbocharged 4-cylinder engine, yet there’s no towering hood scoop or Airbus-sourced rear wing. (Yes, I’m talking to you, Mitsubishi Evo and Subaru WRX STi.)

The aesthetic value of the Mazdaspeed 3′s smooth underbody tray will be lost on everyone but the guys in the pit at Jiffy Lube.

The fun bits of this car are all secreted away beneath the conservative skin. The 2.3-liter turbocharged beast that lives between the front wheels puts down 263 horsepower and a fairly insane 280 pound-feet of torque. (For comparison, the uprated motor in regular Mazda 3s makes 156 horsepower and 150 pound-feet of torque.)

A limited-slip differential helps convert that energy to motion, and 18-inch wheels and low-profile tires, combined with a lower, stiffer suspension, ensure that the chassis can cope with higher cornering speeds.

Inside, you get heavily bolstered Mazda-speed-embroidered seats to hold you in place while you row through the six forward gears of the manual transmission. The finished product is a drastically more capable version of its former self, something like the transition from a BMW 5 Series to an M5.

But most other factory tuner cars — from BMW’s M Works, Mercedes-Benz’s AMG division, Chrysler’s SRT, Audi’s S- and RS, even Subaru’s STi — base their firebreathers on rear-drive or all-wheel-drive chassis.

That is not a coincidence. Putting a lot of horsepower into a front-drive car is like pouring Scotch bonnet pepper sauce on your corn flakes. The result may be exciting, but you’ll surely end up questioning whether it was a good idea.

Here’s what happens when you floor the gas pedal in a Mazdaspeed 3: If you’re steering anywhere except straight, the engine-control electronics withhold the full monty of thrust. Once you’re steering dead ahead, full boost comes on and whacks the front tires with furious vengeance.

New-school turbocharged engines, like BMW’s 3-liter 6, strive to disguise their forced induction with creamy linearity. The mandate is to mimic a larger, naturally aspirated engine so you can’t tell you’re driving a turbo.

The Mazdaspeed 3, on the other hand, is joyful in its turbo-ness, trading driveability for glorious, unadulterated power. When you floor the gas, the little 4-cylinder takes a beat or two to build up some revs, and then the turbo hits so suddenly that the tires start jackhammering the pavement with wheelspin — and that’s with the traction control on.

That’s how quick, and how hard, the power hits: it outruns its own electronics, which would, you’d think, know what to expect. If you nail the takeoff just right, however, 60 m.p.h. can be yours in less than six seconds.

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STEVE MATTIN has a problem with old Volvos: there are so many.

“There are millions of boxy ones out there,” Volvo’s new vice president and director for design grumbled in a recent interview. “We want to move beyond the box.”

One might assume that Volvo would view an abundance of old cars on the road as a rolling testament to the virtues for which it is known: durability and a functional design that transcends fashion. But Mr. Mattin wants to recast Volvo’s visual cues. “We want to evolve our design DNA,” he said.

Design DNA is a label for the basic visual elements that a family of cars has in common – the look of a grille, the angle of a roof, the shape of the taillights. These are what make a Ford look like a Ford or a BMW like a BMW.

Once, the husbandry of design DNA was intuitive, but these days, many designers are trying to delineate design traits exactly, even scientifically, like mapping genomes. Brands in the Ford family have been especially focused on this effort.

At Lincoln, for instance, seven distinct identity traits – from a split grille to horizontal-strip taillights – have been identified, and four or five must appear on future models. All seven traits can be found on the Lincoln MKR concept sedan unveiled at the Detroit auto show in January.

While Mr. Mattin is aiming for younger buyers and a wider market for Volvo – “We want to pump up the visual volume,” he said – another Ford brand, Mazda, is looking into the future for visual themes. Mazda has developed three hypothetical cars that chart a design direction over the next 13 years. The fact that those cars will never be built is beside the point – they only light the way.

At Volvo, Mr. Mattin isn’t seeking dramatic change. After all, it was his boss, Peter Horbury, the director for North American design at Ford, who outlined Volvo’s existing design cues in his earlier job as design director for Volvo. Rather, Mr. Mattin, who like Mr. Horbury was born and educated in Britain, sees an evolution.

As laid out in the XC60 crossover concept shown in Detroit, Mr. Mattin’s vision of post-boxy Volvos is of more complex and sculptural shapes. He envisions more expressive and, as he puts it, more extroverted cars.

Mr. Horbury began his evolution of the Volvo look by the giving the cars a pronounced shoulder, or catwalk. The catwalk is both an echo of 1950s Volvos and a way of softening the high, solid sides of the boxy Volvos that followed, whose sheer bulk and slab sides implied safety. Mr. Horbury gave the sides a high shoulder, rounding off the box in a way that still looked solid, though less utilitarian.

Now Mr. Mattin has angled the catwalk and reshaped the box as two wedges – a greenhouse atop a body – with sculptured sides. Mr. Mattin and his designers – Steve Potter is credited for the exterior, Justin Scully for the interior – accentuated the catwalk and other elements. Solidity, once represented by upright slab sides, is now signaled by expressive scoops into the body, with a depth implying thickness. “I want the cars to be recognizable as Volvos from twice as far away,” Mr. Mattin said.

To pump up the visual volume even at night, Mr. Mattin placed small lights beside the grille so the shape is visible in the dark; he also accentuated the lighting of the arched rear end.

Mr. Mattin, who spent his previous career at Mercedes-Benz in Germany, where he designed models like the small A-Class and the R-Class wagon, is highly aware of the way light changes in Sweden, with its seasonal variation of long days and long nights. He wants Volvos to have big windows that bring in light, and bodies instantly recognizable as Volvos during the long nights.

On the grille, with its diagonal slash of chrome, the logo that Volvo calls the iron sign is larger. For those who dozed through chemistry class, the ancient sign for the element iron is a circle and arrow. In biology, the symbol stands for male (though in American suburbs, Volvos have an image of being driven by women).

The XC60′s upright rear window is a new cue for Volvo, expanding on the similar one on the new C30 (and the P1800 of Volvo’s sportier past). Beneath the broad glass, Volvo is spelled out in huge, widely spaced letters, a virtual banner for brand identification – turning the design language back into written language. The same big letters also show up on the new V70 wagon introduced last week in Geneva.

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FIRST, a disclaimer: I am a former Mazda Miata owner and a confirmed lover of the breed of sports cars it represents. So the opinions expressed henceforth must be weighed against the reality that the 2006 MX-5 is an exceptional sports roadster, one certainly worthy of carrying on its predecessor?s reputation.

Unless, that is, you have spent much time behind the wheel of the original.

The best way I can explain the transformation of the old Miata into the new MX-5 is to count cup holders. In 1990, Mazda introduced its roadster with none; today, the car has four, though still only two seats.

An increase in cup holders is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it is indicative of a confused philosophy behind the car?s first top-to-bottom redesign in 17 years. While more car is the industry?s typical way of delivering year-to-year improvement, the Miata always served another master.

A sizable contingent is attracted to the car?s diminutive size and weight, factors most crucial in authenticating any sports car. But if the purists claim that more is less ? and I count myself among their numbers ? others just want to fit into the car. If you are over six feet tall, that has been a challenge in the Miata.

So the MX-5 has grown. It is about two inches longer than the previous model and an inch and a half wider. Its wheelbase has been stretched 2.5 inches. Thankfully, the car still feels small and any weight increase is nominal. Give Mazda whatever credit you think it deserves for this engineering feat, but if ever there was a time to shed a few of the car?s 2,500 pounds, this was it.

Too bad, as I had hoped Mazda might try to make some serious inroads on the Lotus Elise?s lowest-in-class curb weight (1,984 pounds). Instead, the engineers in Hiroshima opted for more power, replacing the Miata?s venerable 1.8-liter 4-cylinder engine with a new 2-liter unit that makes 170 horsepower, an increase of 28 over the old engine.

This 20 percent gain means the front-engine, rear-drive MX-5 is now fast enough to satisfy those who regarded the Miata as an accessory for secretaries and trophy wives. In a 0-to-60 test, Road & Track magazine clocked the MX-5 at 7.0 seconds.

To further entice those looking for a more masculine car, the MX-5 has adopted some design elements from the Mazda RX-8. While flared fenders certainly make the baby in Mazda?s lineup look more grown-up and aggressive, they ignore a fundamental reason the Miata was a brilliant success. Strange as this sounds, it was popular precisely because it wasn?t much to look at.

The original Miata may have been kind of cute, but its real visual appeal came from what it wasn?t ? it was not plain, pretentious or extroverted. Simple and functional in and out, it never made the kind of polarizing statement that so many sports cars adopt. In a Miata, you actually had a chance of talking your way out of a speeding ticket.

The original car?s smooth, curved design and minimalist interior are still effortlessly contemporary today. By contrast, the MX-5 is trying hard to be hip. Note that the Miata badge has disappeared from the car, leaving the sort of alphanumeric label so trendy today. The interior?s pastiche of shapes and textures is adventurous, but it?s far from attractive. Particularly offensive is a burnt-sienna interior option that goes by the name of ?saddle tan.? It adds color to the list of clashing attributes in the cockpit.

Even sticking with fabric seats and an all-black interior, you?ll be stuck with the car?s horse-collar instrument panel and shiny plastic dashboard trim. Combined with the rest of the hard plastic inside the car, the overall effect just looks cheap.

Once out on the road, the car?s styling miscues are easily forgiven. The suspension is wonderfully balanced and the steering is quick. The shift action of the manual transmission is as perfect as ever. None of the driving dynamics that made the Miata a favorite of autocrossers and spec racers were forgotten in the redesign. At a starting price of $20,995, the MX-5 is still a whole lot of affordable fun ? just not enough to make me like it better than the original.

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