ALEXANDER STOKLOSA, MICHAEL SIMARI, THE MANUFACTURER

From the February 2016 issue

One week before an orthopedic surgeon tunneled into my spine, my wife and I packed our two small parrots into a Mazda CX-3 for a trip to the Bay Area, where I was to drive the new Acura NSX. Of course, the NSX was memorable, as was a bungled attempt to sneak our squawking luggage into the St. Regis San Francisco. But the CX-3 also impressed. Say what you will about the scourge of cute utes, this car is no brain-dead appliance. It shines in every respect, from the canny space utilization to the deft handling to the thrifty fuel economy, which averaged 30 mpg despite my usual pounding pace. One interested party that has often delivered a boisterous opinion on test cars, my severely herniated L5-S1 disc (part of which is now landfill), even murmured quiet approval.

Mazda is an anomaly in a number of ways, starting with the fact that it is both independent and tiny. The automaker—based in balmy, tree-lined Hiroshima where the savory pancakes called okonomiyaki get cooked to a particularly yummy local style—built just a little over 1.3 million vehicles in 2014. That makes Mazda less than half the size of Suzuki. Only Subaru and Isuzu are smaller among Japan’s automakers, though Subaru is gaining rapidly and outsells Mazda two to one in the U.S.

View Photos Mazda showed us a rotary Vette; let’s see a rotary 4C. ALEXANDER STOKLOSA, MICHAEL SIMARI, THE MANUFACTURER

Mazda is also unusual in having confidence in what it stands for. Over the years, and especially since the recession, we’ve watched many a proud brand sink into deep ­second-guessing about identity. ­Toyota was always the staid quality company; Toyota 2.0 wants to be exciting even if it means being gruesome. BMW went mainstream for volume and launched a major diversion into eco-vehicles. Mercedes and its rivals are racing each other to fill every conceivable micro-segment, diluting their brands through product overload.

Meanwhile, Mazda’s two new products last year, the Miata and the CX-3, show the company’s clarity of purpose. The gen-four Miata, smaller and lighter against the industry norms, is a flagship embodying the brand’s core selling point of cheap fun. The CX-3 carries it into a more practical segment, and I have no doubt that the new big CX-9 will, too. In an industry increasingly obsessed with dashboard apps and automated cars, Mazda has planted its flag and it says, “Drivers, we are for you.”

The only problem is that the clock is ticking on Mazda’s moment. To help stave off bankruptcy in 2008, Ford shed most of its stake in Mazda as part of a fire sale of assets, cutting the company loose to sink or swim on its own. Ford may have meddled, but it gave Mazda global scale and enormous purchasing power. With Ford’s shadow gone, the hot sun of industry economics now beats down. Little Mazda must prove Fiat Chrysler chairman Sergio Marchionne wrong when he insists that only giants will survive in the future.

View Photos ALEXANDER STOKLOSA, MICHAEL SIMARI, THE MANUFACTURER

So far, the company has been both shrewd and lucky. It emerged from the Ford breakup and the recession fired up and focused on its enthusiast mission, brandishing the current Kodo design language and Skyactiv engineering as potent weapons. Today’s cars are uniformly excellent, even if their small marketing budgets mean they struggle to get on shopping lists. Strategic tie-ups, including the Mazda MX-5 Miata/Fiat 124 Spider and the Mazda 2/Scion iA deals, help keep the plants busy, and nimble production methods, including a switch to CNC machining of engine blocks instead of station-to-station machining, give Mazda greater line flexibility while cutting tooling costs.

To the lucky part: Currency shifts greatly affect profits, and no Japanese automaker is more exposed than Mazda, which still keeps about 63 percent of its production in Japan even as other automakers have largely moved offshore. But, so far, the persistently weak yen helps make Mazdas affordable. Mazda also may gain from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the massive trade deal that could drop tariffs and make it easier to both build cars in Japan and sell them overseas, especially in developing markets. And Mazda may yet be spared from the risk of introducing diesels to the U.S. now that Volkswagen has dynamited diesel’s reputation.

View Photos 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata ALEXANDER STOKLOSA, MICHAEL SIMARI, THE MANUFACTURER

However, Mazda’s moment can pass quickly. Exchange rates fluctuate, and the TPP cuts both ways, putting Mazda in competition with tariff-free vehicles exported from North America’s teeming transplant factories. Diesel may be dying, but it’s being replaced by electrification, no small challenge for Mazda, which licenses Toyota hybrid tech but doesn’t currently market any gas-electrics in the U.S. And, as my coworker and longtime Mazda owner Don Sherman says, the Zoom-Zoom company “needs the second Zoom.”

It’s got the Miata, and in Tokyo in October it showed a sort of concept rotary Chevy Corvette. Neat, but an Alfa Romeo 4C by a company that takes quality seriously could finally give Porsche’s Boxster/Cayman its first real competition. Acura way overshot with the mega-expensive NSX, so our hopes are now pinned on Mazda, a company that seems to know exactly what our kind wants.

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