Do you want to believe, or do you want to survive?
For some small and medium-sized car manufacturers, if there is no faith, then the meaning of their brand existence is not great, so faith is extremely important; but the problem is that if they cannot survive, then faith cannot be talked about.
In the past few years, we have seen too many manufacturers forced to give up their faith in order to survive, starting from Porsche making SUV, and later Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini have joined the list of "survival", and even recently, even Ferrari and Lotus, who control the last faith of the party, have also embarked on the road to survival of SUV.
Luxury brands are like this, and the survival of civilian brands is naturally more difficult. Mazda is one of them, whether to continue to invest heavily in the "big super" of faith, or to build and sell SUV well, and then have money, for Mazda, there does not seem to be a clear view before.
Until recently, Joachim Kunz, Mazda's head of European engineering and development, publicly stated: "Although the idea of creating a front-facing six-cylinder engine rear-wheel-drive sports coupe as a successor to the Mazda 6 is a good idea, for Mazda, the focus is on the SUV model is the top priority." ”
In other words, the new Mazda 6 project, which has been disclosed to the market before and was originally planned to be released in the first half of this year, may have been shelved indefinitely, and whether it can be successfully mass-produced in the future may depend on Mazda's feedback in the SUV market next.
Obviously, Mazda should have encountered some difficulties on the way to developing a new generation of Ma 6. In theory, if the SUV sells well, then there may be a successor to the Ma 6, and if the SUV strategy fails, then the new generation of Ma 6 may be completely stillborn, so that the generation of Mazda 6 Atez, which is now on sale, will become the last song.
Overall, though, we think Mazda is well positioned to weather the storm. Mazda has released the new CX-60, an SUV model based on a new longitudinal rear-drive platform, and it is also Mazda's first plug-in hybrid (PHEV) model. The company is currently powered by a combination of a 2.5-liter naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine and an electric motor with a combined maximum power of 332 hp (244 kW) and an all-electric cruising range of approximately 63 km, and will be sold in Japan and Europe in the early stage.
Judging from the current market feedback, Japanese and European consumers are still very much looking forward to this new model, and if its subsequent sales are hot, it should also introduce domestic production and compete with other brands of plug-in models, and with the advantage of longitudinal rear-drive, the competitiveness is still relatively advantageous.