Once a year, just before Christmas, the members of the Roadster Club of Japan, devotees of the Mazda Miata, dress up as Santa, turn their cars into genuine Santamobiles and set about doing charitable work in some of Japan's major cities.

The event organized by Mazda Miata owners has been a decade-old tradition in Yokohama and has also been organized in Tokyo for the past three years. Now, some 26 Miata owners, as well as many volunteers and Mazda employees, including the designer of the fourth-generation Miata, took part in a charitable event of this kind organized for the first time in Hiroshima.

The Miata makes for a great road sleigh!

The inaugural Santa rally with Miata power organized in Hiroshima was a sprawling success. The 26 members of the Roadster Club and the volunteers that took part offered kids passenger rides in their drop-top sports cars as cheerful passersby cheered at the Christmassy-looking cars, according to the Zoom-Zoom blog.

The kids also received sketches made on the spot by the designer of the current Miata, much the same going on at the gathering in Yokohama. There, the kids were offered the rare opportunity to take a look inside the Mazda R&D center in the city. The Japanese Nostalgic Car blog tells of the lengths that some of those in attendance went to be part of the whole thing: "One Mazda employee even drove his personal NC Roadster all the way from Hiroshima to Yokohama (about 500 miles each way) to participate."

Meanwhile, Mazda is set to enthrall the adults at the next Tokyo Auto Show by showcasing a number of special models like the Mazda3 Custom Style, as well as modified CX-5 and CX-8 versions and the Mazda Roadster Drop-Head Coupe Concept with its detachable carbon fiber hardtop that will hopefully go into production.

Further reading

Read our full review on the 2016 Mazda MX-5.

Mazda is Set to Put on One Hell of a Showing at the 2019 Tokyo Auto Salon