Mazda is also minority-owned by Mitsubishi Group and Toyota Group and co-owns plenty of plants with Toyota, so it's a different story from Nissan Group which retains independence.
At this point, Mazda is an OEM for Toyota Group, and previously they were an OEM for Ford.
TLDR; Mazda should merge with Nissan while they still can do it on a fire sale.
Mazda is a huge outlier in manfacturing because they are small, but have motorsports calibre/history (meaning they have a history of homologating sports cars.)
Mazda sells an order of magnitude less cars than even newer companies like BYD. Even less than isuzu. Because of this, they can more tightly control investor expectations, profit/loss. The stock value rarely changes, nevermind grows, so investors are confident in stability and dividends.
AKA, if you work at mazda, you aren't gonna be seen as a mega rich engineer. If you invest in mazda, you know you're gonna be able to sell at any point without much worry.
That said, I see no future for mazda beyond acqusition by chinese firm. It Manufactures in far too high COL countries, sells for too cheap, Self cannabalizing (9 different SUV models), too tight of a CUV market, lack of brand identity.....and the biggest issue, they cannot afford to r and d another miata gen, another RX-7,8 gen.
mazda desperetely needs a cash infusion, or joining into a much wider network with more selling power. Until then, I fear they will coast down the same road as Mitsubishi in the us.
> Mazda sells an order of magnitude less cars than even newer companies like BYD. Even less than isuzu.
Mazda sold 1.1M cars in 2023[1]. By comparison Nissan sold 2.9M, BYD 2.6M (obviously this is much less than an order of magnitude difference.
> Mazda is a huge outlier in manfacturing because they are small, but have motorsports calibre/history (meaning they have a history of homologating sports cars.)
Plenty of manufactures have motorsports history. Mazda has a Le Mons win, but apart from that nothing particularly of note. Notably Peugeot and Subaru both have much broader motorsports history and are smaller, and Renault has much much more impressive motorsport pedigree and only sells slightly more cars (1.4M in 2023).
> [Mazda sells an order of magnitude less cars than even newer companies like BYD. Even less than isuzu.] Because of this, they can more tightly control investor expectations, profit/loss. The stock value rarely changes, nevermind grows, so investors are confident in stability and dividends.
This is an argument that is rarely (never?) made, and not born out by the evidence.
Mazda's sales, profit and stock price have all been falling. Their stock price is down from 1700 Yen in 2024 to 1034 Yen today. It's difficult to say "the stock value rarely changes"
> If you invest in mazda, you know you're gonna be able to sell at any point without much worry.
Well if you don't worry about losing money I guess..
I think U.S.-centric readers may misunderstand Mazda. When I was in Singapore, I saw one example of them being quite popular abroad. In the U.S., they seem to be more of an enthusiast / novelty brand.
Last January, I threw Car & Driver stats for 2023 and 2022 best-selling models (from U.S. sales) in a spreadsheet. Mazda was the #12 OEM here, just below Hyundai. (Note this is only based on top 25 models.)
EDIT: Updated to add 2024 top 25.
In 2024, Mazda's CX-5 dropped off the top 25 best-selling, removing it from my spreadsheet.
03. Honda 807,519 11.8%
07. Nissan 398,383 5.8%
In 2023 Mazda increased their volume very slightly, while Nissan lost share, and Honda increased their share.
Wow. I just checked out a few random other markets including Japan, and it's crazy to me that Mazda isn't doing better. They've got some really nice cars. It's bizarre. I wonder if this is by design or they just can't market for shit?
Full disclosure: I'm a Honda driver and was a Toyota driver for many years before that.
