[Aika Car Aika Perspective Original]
"We're all in Benz, Rolls-Royce, you're in Mazda, no wonder you're stuck in traffic, you're in Mazda, you're not qualified to come to this meeting!"
This line from "Black Gold" (a film released in Hong Kong in late 1997 reflecting the ugly political ecology of Taiwan) by the protagonist Zhou Chaoxian (Leung Ka-fai) is half angry and half sarcastic, although it is old, but it has been timeless, and it is still circulated as a classic on major social platforms. Although the words are extremely mean, they also reflect the slightly awkward position of the Mazda brand in the eyes of some "gold class". However, although it is not favored by high-end people, Mazda's reputation among ordinary people is not generally good, and the peak state of life that is unanimously recognized in the Guoan Tieba where more than 3 million users gather is a suite + a Artez.
Just as many young girls have made or are dreaming of "marrying into the rich", civilian car brands also have the ambition to advance to the luxury camp, and Mazda is particularly enthusiastic in this regard. In terms of its recent initiatives, such as: "four medium- and medium-sized SUVs with rear-drive or four-wheel drive will be launched for the North American, European and Japanese markets within two years", "The upcoming launch of an inline six-cylinder engine", "The head of the British branch has made it clear that Mazda aims to become a luxury brand", all of which indicate that Mazda is determined to go again after thirty years of "giant" advancement.
Mazda will launch a total of four mid-size/midsize SUVs with rear-drive or all-wheel drive to the North American market and the European/Japanese market in 2022-2023.
Jeremy Thomson, chief executive of Mazda's UK branch, was the first to reveal to the media Mazda's plans to "promote" high-end brands.
What really happened thirty years ago? Why did Mazda's dream of being a giant rise and fall?
A dream of greatness as fragile as foam
In the 1970s, the Muskie Act (officially known as the 1970 Atmospheric Cleanup Act), named after the amendment bill proposed and promoted by Edmund Sixtus Muskie, a member of the U.S. Senate at the time, and the slightly later Energy Tax Act sounded the death knell for American high-displacement luxury cars, and also gave Japanese cars known for their energy efficiency a stepping stone to enter the U.S. market. The oil crisis has further consolidated the position of Japanese cars in the North American market. By 1980, Japanese models had a market share of 20% in the United States.
The Muskie Act, as amended by the Air Purification Act of 1963, and the subsequent U.S. Energy Tax Act, had a profound impact on U.S. and Japanese car companies.
Edmund Sixtus Muskie has contributed a lot to Japanese car companies entering the U.S. market.
The three major American automobile giants, which have a considerable voice in the political arena, are naturally not willing to sit still and begin to urge their own governments to put pressure on Japan to restrict the import of Japanese cars. In response, Japanese car companies began to build factories in the United States to avoid policy risks, and then further "sacrificed" the establishment of luxury sub-brands as a coping strategy, and strived to fight against the "ground snake" by improving the brand image and improving the profit margin of bicycles.
The pressure brought by economical and environmentally friendly and reliable Japanese goods to the local car companies in the United States is obvious, and in the 80s, there were successive incidents of smashing Japanese cars in various parts of the United States, and this phenomenon should not be unfamiliar to the Chinese people.
It was also during this period that the three major Japanese luxury brands of Acura, Lexus and Infiniti were born one after another, and all of them achieved outstanding results in the North American market. All this is seen by Mazda, how can he not have an idea? In fact, as part of the brand's expansion plan, Mazda has launched two high-end sub-brands in Japan from the late 1980s to the beginning of the 90s, Eunos and Efini, but the North American market is the key to meeting Mazda's "ambitions". In the spring of 1989, Mazda launched a generation of classic sports car in the United States, the MX-5 Miata, achieved quite good results, and further enhanced Mazda's confidence in "winning" the North American market.
Acura was the first Japanese luxury brand to enter the North American market, and its Legend and Integra (pictured below) were well received locally.
Perhaps to commemorate Miata's triumph, Mazda named its luxury brand built specifically for the North American market Amati, and set its sights on Lexus's LS400 to begin developing the flagship model of the new luxury brand, the Amati 1000, a 4.0L W12-cylinder engine with a maximum power of 206kW (there is controversy here, and former Mazda executive Bob Hall revealed to the media in 2018 that Amati's top-of-the-line model will carry the V12). 5.0L engine, and the introduction of 3.6L and 4.6L models, the so-called 4.0L W12 engine is just to confuse opponents of the top large sedan.
The first generation of the MX-5 Miata, launched in the United States in 1989, was well received, which also strengthened Mazda's determination to launch a luxury sub-brand in North America.
In the early 1990s, changes in the economic situation in the United States and Japan directly destroyed Mazda's luxury sub-brand plans, and the flagship Amati 1000, which was stillborn, died with hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development funds and promotion costs.
In addition to this, there are also compact Amati 300, mid-size sedan Amati 500 with four-wheel steering technology, and Cosmo-based sports cars (the standard Lexus SC400), which can be said to be Mazda's tailor-made product matrix for this new brand.
However, the design concept of the Amati 1000 was later used by the second generation of Mazda Sentia.
Amati was originally planned to go on sale in 1994, and there were 67 dealers on the network (the LOGO in the picture is the Amati brand logo)
Mazda officially released the Amati brand in August 1991, but with the decline in the US market for luxury car consumption in the early 90s and the continuous decline of the Japanese economy like a free fall, the overextending of the past few years has caused Mazda serious financial problems, in order to survive, Mazda first cut its investment in motorsport (even though the 787B just won the Le Mans 24 Hours of Endurance), and then had to be in October 1992, a year after the brand's release. Announced the abandonment of the Amati branding program. Amati also passed away with a whopping 50 billion yen (about $400 million) in research and development costs, $60 million in advertising and publicity costs, and the eager expectations of 67 U.S. distributors.
The internal and external incentives for high-end branding
After understanding the past thirty years ago, looking back at the present, the opportunity and driving force that prompted Mazda to transform into a luxury brand again is also obvious. Whether it is from the Mazda corporate fiscal year data or its sales data for the natural year of 2021, it is quite eye-catching data (April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021 is the fiscal year of Japanese enterprises, Mazda's global sales of 1.287 million units), it is not easy to achieve positive growth in the continuous state of the epidemic, North America as Mazda's largest single market sales of 403,000 units, an increase of 2% year-on-year; and if calculated in the natural year, Mazda's North American market in 2021 was 332,700 units, up 19.2% year-on-year, the best performance since 1994.
In 2021, not only will there be a significant increase in global and North American sales, but Mazda will also launch the first electric model, the MX-30 (rotor range).
In a not ideal environment, the good performance of the world and major markets has given Mazda enough confidence, consumers vote with real money and silver, proving that Mazda's products still have enough attractiveness, and the more stable "basic disk" gives it the confidence to have the courage to seek upwards.
The CX-50 also rolled off the production line in 2021 at its Alabama facility.
In 2021, Mazda's full range of models won the IIHS top safety test score in the United States for two consecutive years.
In addition, Mazda also hopes to achieve the goal of increasing profits through high-end brands and products, and how urgent the demand in this regard is, the comparison knows. Take the sales forecasts and profit expectations of Toyota and Mazda for fiscal 2021.4.1-2022.3.31 as a reference: Toyota's expected sales volume is 10.29 million units (including Toyota, Lexus, Daihatsu, and Hino, the data will be dynamically adjusted), and the operating profit is 24.33 billion US dollars; while Mazda announced earlier that the expected sales volume for the fiscal year reached about 1.4 million units, and the operating profit was only 590 million US dollars. Although the operating profit cannot be roughly linked to the profit of the bicycle and the brand positioning, it also has certain reference value.
The epidemic, chip shortages and soaring raw material prices have caused major car companies to have factory shutdowns, Mazda is also difficult to stand alone, just in late March, Mazda's two factories in Japan were suspended for two days due to the interruption of parts supply, whether limited resources and production capacity should be concentrated in high-profit models is a real problem that every car company must consider.
At the same time, the continuation of the epidemic, chip shortages and raw material prices soared and other factors, but also let the major car companies have frequent factory shutdowns, shrinkage of production capacity, the shortage of raw materials have made the major car companies began to consider the limited production capacity, parts supply and other resources concentrated on the higher profitability of the model, and the relatively small scale and the main products concentrated in the low-end field of Mazda, naturally need to launch more high-end models.
What are the odds of winning the road to becoming a "big man"?
Expecting a mere auto media person to predict the success of Mazda's strategy to grow an auto company is obviously a joke. However, it must be said that Mazda wants to achieve the goal of brand upward by launching new products in the medium and large SUV segments this time, and the entry point is quite accurate.
According to the data of relevant authoritative institutions, the medium-sized and medium-sized SUV market (unified as Mid-sized in North America) is the most outstanding segment in the United States in 2021, with an 11% sales increase outperforming the overall market, while the segment also reached a sales scale of 3 million units for the first time and accounted for 20.1% of total U.S. car sales. To sum up, it is that the scale is large enough, the rally is gratifying, and the prospects are quite promising.
The 332-horsepower CX-60 is the first of four new midsize/midsize SUVs mazda plans to launch, carrying Mazda's promise of moving towards a premium brand.
In another major market, Europe, the performance of mid-size SUVs is even more prominent, and the overall car sales in Europe in 2021 are the lowest since 1985, and the market shrinkage that can last for several years still cannot hide the surge in the mid-size SUV segment. In 2021, 716,355 mid-size SUVs were sold in Europe, and although the size of the market segment was still not as large as small and compact cars, the 42.6% increase was beyond the reach of other market segments. Looking at these data, it is not difficult to understand Mazda's intention to announce four medium-sized/medium-sized SUV products at one time.
The frenzied demand for mid-size SUVs in the U.S. and European markets has prompted Mazda to launch several new models for this segment.
However, it is worth noting that whether it is a new product release or a "leaky machine" of the British branch, it shows that Mazda has no intention of adopting the same "advanced" approach as thirty years ago - that is, launching an independent luxury sub-brand, but completely reshaping the high-end positioning and image around the brand. In response to this decision, I dare not comment on this decision, but judging from the two cases of "the fiasco of Suzuki, which focused on cars, in Kaisers" and "the achievements of Hyundai after the launch of the luxury sub-brand Genises", it is not easy to complete the bottom-up transformation without launching an independent sub-brand. After all, it is a century-old brand that wants to reverse the secular views that have been fixed for a long time, and it is the human heart that is against it.
Perhaps learning the lessons of thirty years ago, Mazda doesn't seem to have any intention of launching a luxury sub-brand, but it's not easy to reposition itself around the brand. Suzuki, the king of the trolleys, once lost the battle on the mid-size Car Kaisersee.
As a modern luxury sub-brand, Jinisaisi has made sales and word-of-mouth progress in the past two years for Mazda.
Whether Mazda can transform from a well-known civilian sports brand to a high-end brand seems to be a sentimental issue related to the beliefs and emotions of many car fans (or car black), but it is actually a business strategy problem that involves corporate interests, development prospects and even survival conditions. For Mazda, compared with the luxury brand title of retreat, how to sell several new cars with higher positioning and higher bicycle profits, and ensure that they are alive and well in this unfavorable environment where there is no end in sight for the time being, is the right topic.