Mazda and Toyota furthering a tie-up.

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For a couple of years now, Mazda has looked to Toyota as a partner to help them compete. This is part of a general trend in which Toyota, Nissan and Honda will become Japan's big three, swallowing up smaller companies like Suzuki, Subaru, and Mitsubishi. Mazda already has an agreement to build SkyActiv engines for Toyota in their smaller compact cars. This new agreement will solidify a agreement for Mazda to use Toyota's battery and hybrid systems for future Mazda vehicles.


https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20170804_14/
 
Mazda is building entire cars for Toyota in their new Mexico factory, first one outside the main one at Hiroshima. Up until two years ago or so, every Mazda was Japan built. Most still are.

Mazda is and always has been a small car company by Japanese standards, when Ford pulled out they were left in the lurch and lost money for quite a while. Aside from building entire cars for Toyota, they are also doing the Fiat 124 in Japan. They did similar things with Ford, building the compact Ford Courier trucks for example, and a few others ... Ford Probe / Mercury Capri, if I remember correctly. At least those cars had Mazda drivetrains. The Honda S2000 also uses a Mazda transmission and independent rear axle, and one of the earlier Kias (1980~90's) used Mazda engines.

I'm pretty sure these deals are just to shore up the finances of the company, so it can compete.
 
Just to add a bit of speculation, Sumitomo Bank was the lender to Mazda for the loan to buy back the remaining block of shares from Ford. Sumitomo is part of the Mitsui keiretsu and Toyota also a member of that giant conglomerate. I'd suspect a behind the scenes agreement was made for both companies to cooperate which of course benefits Mitsui in the long run.

I have also read that Toyota and Mazda will be putting up a new US assembly plant that both will share. No word on where this plant will be located. This is recent news and due to the new President's America First initiative.
 
The Japanese auto industry is infamously incestous. Nissan used to own 20% of Subaru. Nowadays Toyota owns 16% of Subaru, which spawned the GT86/FR-S/BRZ collaboration. Suzuki has produced cars for all of the smaller Japanese OEMs. I don't know that much about the history but there are other examples.
 
Mazda is seemingly not interested in becoming a Big 3 Japan automaker, maybe like Subaru in that respect, because if they were, they would not build their cars the way they do. Everyone knows Toyota is No1 but here in North America some people might be surprised to learn Nissan is No2, well ahead of Honda. Nissan struggles in our market and Honda thrives, but it's not like that everywhere.
 
Originally Posted By: Ethan1
The Japanese auto industry is infamously incestous. Nissan used to own 20% of Subaru. Nowadays Toyota owns 16% of Subaru, which spawned the GT86/FR-S/BRZ collaboration. Suzuki has produced cars for all of the smaller Japanese OEMs. I don't know that much about the history but there are other examples.




Yep. It's the Keiretsu that is in charge. Toyota has Suzuki, Hino trucks, Daihatsu, and others. Denso, Aisin and a bunch of OEM suppliers as well. All are under the Mitsui keiretsu.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsui
 
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There is not much chance for Mazda to compete with the big boys. I think their market share is less than 2% globally. They had only the one assembly plant in Hiroshima until the Mexican plant and the US plant are online. Nissan has their Renault association and Honda is more widespread with their motorcycle and power equipment business.
 
Toyoda?
Tomata?
ToyoMa? (Like YoYo Ma)
Toyota was once involved with Chevy. I think the nickname was Toyolet....
 
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Originally Posted By: beanoil

Toyota was once involved with Chevy. I think the nickname was Toyolet....


Good one.

I had a Toyolet incident at work this week. I had received a Pontiac Vibe ECM from GM in a box that had obviously been completely soaked in water, but was still sealed with the heavy duty box glue GM likes to use. I wasn't even going to try it with a soaked box, so I had a damage claim filed on it and sent it back. GM emails my boss saying we sent them a Toyota ECM, with pictures of it now out of the box. And sure enough, there was a label on it that said "TOYOTA"...as there was on the replacement that hadn't been dunked in water. We had to politely explain to GM that Toyota sort of had something to do with the Vibe.
crazy.gif
In their defense, the people who process returns aren't engineers and don't know the specifics of each GM model, but it was still kind of funny.
 
Mazda has long been in talks to use Toyota EV and hybrid technology. In return, Toyota gets access to the petrol and diesel Skyactiv engines.

I think this is a positive sign. Mazda has done an admirable job stretching every R&D dollar across as much of their line as they can. Even running such a tight ship, profitability is precarious for such a small company since Ford left them in the wind. If they can share their engineering prowess with Toyota in exchange for shared R&D, this will go a long way to increasing their stability.

All the recent news stories have driven home the fact that Mazda is not looking to be the next high volume automaker. They are heavily focused on creating repeat customers and driving their product lines to entry-level, affordable enthusiast cars. The value Japanese version of BMW, if you will. Not a whole lot of manufacturers have filled this space, so it will be interesting to see if they can pull it off. Obviously, they have a lot of work to do to get there, but they are off to a good start since they freed themselves from their former Ford corporate overlords.

Mazda is often written off here in North America as a backwater Japanese brand using the Ford parts bin. Nothing could be further from the truth these days, but perception is often reality. However, it is important to remember that Mazda has the #1 selling car in Australia (Mazda 3) and they sell very well in Europe. These markets are continuing to subsidize their efforts to stabilize their North American operation.
 
Australians really love their Mazda. Besides the 3, the CX-5 enjoys being one of if not the top selling crossover there.
 
Originally Posted By: Ethan1
The Japanese auto industry is infamously incestous.


Those in the US probably have no idea how incestuous. Mazda make vans badged as Mazda, but also Ford, Nissan and Mitsubishi. They make cars badged as Nissan, and Nissan make cars badged as Mazda. The lastest scandal with Mitsubishi was them making cars for Nissan, and then getting into trouble for doing what Nissan wanted...economy figues they needed to meet. Nissan were also making the same vehicle.

Mazda lost a lot of ground down here from the early '80's, and sold a lot of cars, unfortunatly most of them had Ford badges on them, Mazda sales of the same vehicles were a lot less. The Ford Laser was a very popular car, the identical 323 much less so.
 
The news last year that Nissan was buying over 30% of Mitsubishi was a story in itself. Mitsubishi was blamed for cheating on fuel economy by the Japanese govt. relating to the very small kei cars sold in Japan. Nissan was the one who spilled the beans. After Mitsubishi's share prices plummeted to dangerously low numbers, Nissan then announced the share buyout. It's the stuff movies are made of.
 
Originally Posted By: Johnny2Bad
Mazda is seemingly not interested in becoming a Big 3 Japan automaker, maybe like Subaru in that respect, because if they were, they would not build their cars the way they do. Everyone knows Toyota is No1 but here in North America some people might be surprised to learn Nissan is No2, well ahead of Honda. Nissan struggles in our market and Honda thrives, but it's not like that everywhere.


One of the best cars I've ever owned (1992 Sentra SER) was a Nissan. I feel that Nissan quality went down when they partnered up with Renault and Carlos Ghosen (? for spelling of his last name)

Also, as a Ford fan, I was disappointed that Ford had to sell their share of Mazda because I felt that Ford benefitted from Mazda's engineering prowess...I fully supported Ford dumping Jaguar and Volvo since they couldn't afford to run them properly.
 
Originally Posted By: beanoil
....Toyota was once involved with Chevy. I think the nickname was Toyolet....

Kinda funny. Being serious though I owned one, Geo Prizm Hatchback made by NUMMI. One of the best cars I ever owned, very reliable.
 
And today we get the announcement of the Toyota-Mazda joint venture factory (50:50 cost sharing, $1.5 billion cost) to be built somewhere in the US. It also involves a stock swap with each company buying about $550 million of each other's stock.
 
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