Originally Posted By: dareo
Mazda sells a reasonable volume of cars. But they are absolutely smashed by Toyota, Honda, Hyundai/Kia, Nissan, GM, Ford, VW, pretty much every big car maker in terms of volume. If you can sell 200-400k units per year you can come off sticker thousands more than Mazda and still have good profit. Mazda imports from Japan in low volume and simply cannot afford to be near the same final price point as the super high volume cars. Most midsize sedan buyers are all about that bottom line. More than 2 million midsize cars that are not a Mazda 6 sold in 2013, and 43,638 Mazda 6 were sold. That is great if you want a more exclusive sedan, but not good for cost per unit vs everyone else.
Ford has no problems selling F150s, 763,402 units in 2013, and they discount very heavily off MSRP. They dominate the market share and want it to stay that way.
Selling in high volume is great if you want to be a huge manufacturer of things that people buy. Some companies only want to be more and more huge, like Toyota, GM, Ford, and VW.
Mazda is one of those companies that don't need to be huge, yet still turn a tidy profit.
They make a group of vehicles that not everyone wants, and those that do are willing to spend a bit more on.
You know, like BMW, Porsche, Maserati, Ferrari, Bentley, etc.
Granted that Mazda currently does not pull in the profit margins of the above brands, but in comparison to Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Chevy, and Ford, I believe that on a per vehicle basis, Mazda averages more profit per vehicle sold than the competing product at these other manufacturers.
They are making their products have less defects per vehicle at initial release, and are resolving the issues that do arise quickly, and applying the solutions to the assembly line, quickly. Can't do the same at Huge Automakers, without throwing a wrench into the whole works.
People who only care about the bottom dollar buy cars that are not Mazda's.
People who care about driving dynamics, are much more likely to buy a Mazda.
BC.