Vehicles rear windshield spontaneously shattered. Vehicle was idle and upon starting the vehicle a cracking sound was heard in the cabin and the rear view mirror was unusable as the rear windshield was entirely shattered into <1 inch pieces. Small pieces of loose glass had fallen from both upper corners of the windshield. The windshield is still attached to the vehicle and rear visibility is severely limited. No third-party inspections have been executed. There was no previous damage to the windshield and the car was idling when the failure occurred. There were no indications of potential failure before the incident.
Visibility & wipers
2017 Mazda MX-5 Visibility problems
Owners have filed 4 complaints about the 2017 Mazda MX-5's visibility & wipers with NHTSA - 36% of all its complaints, most recently on June 17, 2025. Windshields, wipers, defrosters, mirrors, backup cameras and glare.
- Complaints
- 4
- Recalls
- 0
- Crashes
- 0
- Fires
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Deaths
- 0
Visibility complaints
The windshield cracked while the vehicle was parked in a lot. The crack appears to have started on the passenger side edge of the windshield and rapidly propogated horizontally along the center of the windshield to roughly the center of the glass. The car had 12000 miles on it when the windshield cracked.
At 8300 miles this car has dozens of rock chips in the windshield, most of which were picked up from driving on relatively clean interstates and some of which have begun to spiderweb. I believe that the glass on this vehicle is abnormally susceptible to picking up chips from rocks which will in time create stress risers and cause the windshield to fail prematurely. I talked to a mazda rep and they said that there were no recalls on this vehicle nor was the windshield covered by the factory warranty. They directed me to take my complaint to my insurance company. More pictures are available upon request.
The headliner on my convertible top comes unfastened right above the rear window. It sags down blocking the veiw by an inch and a half. This has been fixed 3 times and continues to happen. This window is small to begin with. The car was stationary and the top was being taken down.
Mazda MX-5 visibility complaints by year
MX-5 visibility problems, every yearSource: U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) complaints and recalls, checked . Complaints are owners' own reports and are not verified. How we use the data