Not counting micro-passengers and light passengers, not counting girder cars, how many back-drive passenger cars are sold by non-luxury brands in China?
Toyota Supra, Ford Explorer, Ford Mustang, Subaru BRZ, that's all there is to it.
"No back-up, not luxurious", this brainwashing slogan of Cadillac's viral marketing at that time is typical of "rough words are not rough". Even if users do not understand the performance differences of different drive forms, in the eyes of the vast majority of people, luxury brand high-end models and high-performance sports cars are endorsed by the rear-drive layout, which is enough to form the impression of "rear-drive = advanced, sporty, and performance". With prices close and wallets allowing, back-drive cars will still be easier to please high-end consumers than front-drive cars.
So, if a brand used to be known as an ordinary brand, and now it wants to become a luxury brand, then "building a back-drive car" is a potential path.
This brand is called Mazda, and this rear-drive car is Mazda's new SUV model CX-60.
The back-drive Mazda finally became a reality
Mazda built a rear-wheel drive, which had a foreshadowing in this decade.
First of all, Mazda has not had a mass-produced concept car in this decade, except for an RX-VISION, which symbolizes a flagship rotor engine sports car, the remaining two coupes are both rear-drive architectures. Secondly, in Mazda's patent filing in 2020, an in-line six-cylinder engine and a longitudinal 8AT also appeared in the material. Coupled with the frequent expressions of Mazda executives in recent years to make Mazda a luxury brand, Mazda's after-driving car should be a long-planned thing.
But somewhat surprisingly, Mazda will be the first to achieve rear-drive on SUVs rather than cars.
In the SUV matrix of Mazda's new CX-X0 naming system, the CX-30, which has already been listed, and the CX-50 released at the end of last year are the front-drive platforms, focusing on the mainstream small and compact markets. Starting from the CX-60, all based on Mazda's new rear-drive platform, the CX-60 and CX-80 are positioned in medium and medium-sized SUVs, while the CX-70 and CX-90 are the "wide-body versions" of the first two in the North American market. The CX-60 is the first step in Mazda's "new luxury dream".
If you have to find an imaginary enemy for the Mazda CX-60, it must be the BMW X3.
In terms of size, the CX-60 is almost identical to the BMW X3; in terms of pricing, the CX-60 with a 2.5-liter plug-in hybrid system starts at 47,390 euros (about 329,000 yuan) and the BMW X3 with a 2.0T engine starts at 47,000 euros (about 326,000 yuan), which is also highly overlapping.
In other words, Mazda has anchored the CX-60 in the luxury mid-size SUV market represented by the BMW X3, and has chosen to compete head-on with the product power to match the luxury brand.
Therefore, even if the public opinion for Mazda's desire to become a luxury brand, there is no lack of ridicule and ridicule, but Mazda is hard to go down, and really the legendary vertical rear-drive car mass production. Moreover, the power system of this platform is not only 2.5L plug-in hybrid, but also a 3.0T inline six-cylinder engine with a 48V light hybrid system will appear in the product sequence in the future.
Mazda, which announced on the occasion of the brand's centenary in 2020 that it would not release a new model in two years, finally returned to the public eye in 2022 with a high-end posture.
However, how much can Mazda's new luxury dream be realized by building a rear-drive car?
Why does Mazda have to be a luxury brand?
If Mazda could have done well in the mass market, it wouldn't have gone to such extremes as it is now. On the contrary, it is precisely because Mazda has a gene in its bones that does not want to conform to the crowd, it is impossible to have a large volume in the mass market.
Therefore, it is difficult to say whether Mazda wants to be a luxury brand, whether it is subjectively driven or objectively forced. But there is no denying that Mazda's size is indeed shrinking. In fiscal 2021 (April 2020 to March 2021), Mazda produced 1.171 million units worldwide, down 18.3% year-on-year. Mazda's sales in China in 2021 were 183,900 units, down 14.3% year-on-year. Of course, there are reasons why Mazda's models have not been updated in the past two years, but Mazda's unique personality and product positioning that does not compromise with mainstream public preferences determine its market share, which will only become less and less.
Therefore, Mazda wants to continue to survive, either changing its positioning to a wider mainstream consumer group, or on the basis of adhering to positioning, pushing the brand to a high-end market that is more receptive to Mazda's style.
Apparently, Mazda wanted to choose the latter.
From the statement of Changan Mazda President Toshishi Nakajima when he first took office in 2020, we can draw out several key points for the development of the Mazda brand:
Differentiated competition, value marketing, take the route of boutique personalization;
It will never offer home models like other Japanese brands;
Never cater to mass users with an elongated body;
Will improve the positioning, but does not mean to become a high-priced luxury brand;
For the sake of persistent design and technology, you can do whatever it takes.
It is worth mentioning that Jeremy Thomson, Mazda's general manager of the UK region, was asked in an interview "would you like to be a second Lexus", and his answer was "why not".
However, even if we admit that Mazda's mechanical quality and workmanship materials have reached the level of luxury brands, these are only necessary and insufficient conditions. Mazda's most difficult thing to overcome is brand recognition.
It's much harder to change cognition than to build cognition. What's more, Mazda is using the product thinking of luxury brands in the past 100 years to challenge luxury brands, and the identity of "latecomer" alone is enough to make consumers more harsh on Mazda - if it cannot produce dimensional differences or absolutely crush product strength, the insignificant differences between products obviously cannot determine the market position of the brand.
Tesla rewrites the rules of the BBA by reshaping the evaluation standards of the car, relying on creating a new car with the integration of software and hardware as the core and the ability to grow continuously, and now the BBA is also following the path created by Tesla. In contrast, Mazda still stays in the rules established by luxury brands, and tries to use the "95 points to 90 points" book advantage to make itself a member of luxury brands.
However, it is too hard.
If Mazda's move can still attract some consumers in the relatively conservative European and Japanese markets, will consumers put it at the same height as BBA in the more open and new markets that have gradually penetrated into the depths of the market in China and the United States?
Perhaps the only people who would think so were Mazda's die-hard fans.
At this point, the answer is clear. Mazda is to serve this group of die-hard fans well, and the preferences of this group of consumers are the source of Mazda's definition of car manufacturing. They may not be cold to the new things such as assisted driving, intelligent networking, and vehicle OTA, while Mazda wants to strengthen and amplify the most essential driving control pleasure through the back drive.
However, the iteration of consumers may be faster than Mazda imagines. Even if Mazda was once a die-hard fan, will he still adhere to the same concept of consumption today?
So it's a dangerous move, especially when the trend of new cars is unstoppable, and Mazda's effect of doing so is not the same as a decade ago. But this is another move that Mazda has to take, if it can't transform into a new force overnight, and then step by step in the traditional market to a niche, then from niche to more high-end niche, is Mazda's way of survival.
Write at the end
When Mazda smooths out operations in China, Mazda's resource investment and model investment in its only partner, Changan Mazda, will inevitably be more concentrated, and the communication efficiency and response speed of Both China and foreign countries to the needs of the Chinese market will theoretically increase. So, will the rear-drive vehicles of these new platforms be introduced domestically? If introduced domestically, will the CX-60 really sell at the same price as the BMW X3 did in Europe?
Perhaps Mazda should take a closer look at how China's new generation of consumers have a new understanding of "luxury cars".