Mazda manages to compete, and be competitive, in the global mainstream without the advantage of massive corporate scale. Toyota and Volkswagen vie for the top spot with 9-10 million car and SUV sales a year. Mazda sold 1.5+m last year predicting growth to 1.6+m this year.
So, if you don’t have the scale you have to be smart. The Mazda6, for example, seems entirely conventional – front-wheel drive; saloon or estate bodywork. But, like the whole range, it is the result of a total re-think on how a vehicle is built from R&D to procurement, logistics, production process and engineering of the vehicle itself.
It’s been branded “SKYACTIV”. Engines are SKYACTIV-G (gasoline/petrol) or SKYACTIVE-D (Diesel). And, here in the Autumn (initially in the new Mazda3), there is SKYACTIV-X. Truly ground-breaking, it runs on petrol but combines both a spark ignition (petrol) and compression ignition (Diesel) combustion process.
So, if you don’t have the scale you have to be smart. The Mazda6, for example, seems entirely conventional – front-wheel drive; saloon or estate bodywork. But, like the whole range, it is the result of a total re-think on how a vehicle is built from R&D to procurement, logistics, production process and engineering of the vehicle itself.
It’s been branded “SKYACTIV”. Engines are SKYACTIV-G (gasoline/petrol) or SKYACTIVE-D (Diesel). And, here in the Autumn (initially in the new Mazda3), there is SKYACTIV-X. Truly ground-breaking, it runs on petrol but combines both a spark ignition (petrol) and compression ignition (Diesel) combustion process.
RSS Feed