When the admiration is mutual, and the partnerships are among good friends, it's easy to make fun things happen quickly. Racing legends Peter Brock and John Morton will fly their famous #46 red, white, and blue pattern on a classic Japanese roadster at Road Atlanta later this month. The difference is that this will be a current brand of car, and it will be the most popular roadster ever sold or raced, the Mazda MX-5 Miata.

For many years, the annual Walter Mitty Challenge has been a favorite vintage race weekend on the East Coast. Mazda teamed up to sponsor the event with Classic Motorsports/Grassroots Motorsports and HSR in 2006. To add a dash of the new and modern, Mazda brought its popular SCCA Pro Racing Playboy MX-5 Cup series to the vintage race weekend.

Each year, a racing legend is honored at the Mitty -- for 2010, that honored legend is Peter Brock of Brock Racing Enterprises, aka BRE, fame. At this point, it's not clear if the idea came from Mazda, from Classic Motorsports, HSR, a BRE fan, or elsewhere, but someone simply said, "Wouldn't it be cool to have a BRE MX-5 in the Playboy race to honor Pete?"

With Mazda, good ideas can turn into reality with a few quick phone calls. The Mazda design team sketched up a proper BRE graphics job for the MX-5. The MAZDASPEED team called John Morton to verify his interest. Since John had also scored more than a few race wins with Mazda during his career, that connection was strong, and his desire to race remains strong. Finally, Pete and Gayle Brock were shown the sketch and pitched the idea. Everyone said yes.