This year Mazda celebrates its 100-year anniversary, having produced some memorable models along the way (hello, Mazdaspeed3). However, there are a number worth forgetting, and maybe you have. Scroll down to take a walk down Mazda’s memory lane.
Intersted in seeing more historical Mazdas? Click here to see 60 years of pretty/pretty ugly Mazda family cars and vans.
Photo courtesy of Mazda Motor Corporation
Mazda began as a cork products manufacturing company in 1920. A year later, Jujiro Matsuda took charge of Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd. (shown above in 1929) and changed the business to make it a machine tool producer. The company wouldn’t be known as Mazda until years later.
Photo courtesy of Mazda Motor Corporation
A decade after the changeover, the company was transformed again, now making three-wheeled trikes like the 1931 Mazda Go (shown above) and a prototype motorcycle.
Motorcycle racing was a popular pastime in Japan in the late 1920s. However, most of the models were imported, or assembled in Japan from imported parts.
Photo courtesy of Mazda Motor Corporation
In 1929, Toyo Kogyo, as Mazda was then known, decided to build a domestic Japanese bike. They began development of a prototype in 1929 and from that a 250cc two-stroke prototype motorbike (shown above) was born. It was revealed in October 1930, winning its first race by beating an Ariel, one of the most-popular bike brands in the 1930s.
Following that success, the company produced 30 more motorcycles in 1930. The company priced the motorcycles at 350 to 380 Japanese yen, which is about $31,800- $34,500 in today’s U.S. dollars.
But, a changes was, once again, afoot. The company decided to focus on developing the Mazda Go rather than the two-wheeler.
Then, it was time for a car.
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In 1940, Toyo Kogyo built a small two-door prototype car called the PKW prototype (shown above). By that time, however, the tides were turning. The world was waking up to news from the battlefields of World War II every day and it wouldn’t be long before the war expanded to the Pacific Theater. The PKW prototype would never make it to production.
The company, like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, and Ford began creating products to help assist the war effort. Japan was on the side of Germany and Italy. Toyo Kogyo began producing series 30 through 35 Type 99 rifles instead of cars.
Post-war, Toyo Kogyo focused on their Type GA and Type GB three-wheeled Mazda Go-inspired three-wheeled trucks.
Photo courtesy of Mazda Motor Corporation
Along with three-wheelers, Toyo Kogyo produced another prototype, one of the four-wheeled variety. The Type-CA (shown above) was a one-ton four-wheeled truck with a small, open-sided canvas roof and split-screen open deck. It was reminiscent of the Willys Jeep, which helped the Allies win WWII.
The truck pre-dated the company’s first production car by 10 years.
A new era at Toyo Kogyo was ushered in with the 1960 Mazda R360 (shown below), the company’s first car. The kei car was a two-door, four-seat coupé. Production of the model lasted for six years.
Photo courtesy of Mazda Motor Corporation
That same year, Toyo Kogyo sold its first bus. The 13-seater was based on the company’s D1500 cab-over compact truck and was sold to the Japanese Defense Agency. The bus’s interior had seats that folded so the model could be used to transport injured officers on stretchers.
The D1500 was exported to the Middle East where it was equipped with center-opening freestyle rear doors, which allowed it to be used as an ambulance.
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Five years later, the 1965 Light Bus Type-A (shown above) was introduced, based on the concept the company showed at the 1964 Tokyo Motor Show. It featured a curved laminated safety glass windshield and unique styling that set it apart from the traditional bus.
In the 1970s, the automaker continued to produce upscale mini-buses using the Parkway model name. It was in the 1974 Parkway 26 that the company introduced the world’s first rotary engine-powered bus.
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During that same timeframe, the CVS Personal Car Concept (shown above) debuted, moving the story of the Mazda brand along. CVS stood for computer-controlled vehicle system. The concept had a wheel at each corner box with sliding doors and a spacious interior that was designed for passenger comfort complete with big leather chairs and a telephone.
Mazda designed a rail track to “drive” the model on. The automaker says that, “this 70s self-driving pod looked like futuristic fantasy in 1973, but today strangely familiar to anyone who’s ridden on the business parking pods at Heathrow airport terminal five.”
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The roster of vehicles in the 1970s was rife with oddities. The company wanted to make a a large executive car to be used by Japanese government officials so the Mazda Road Pacer AP (shown above) was launched in 1975. The car wasn’t entirely from the company’s R&D team.
According to Mazda, ” It used Holden HJ bodies, which were shipped to Japan without engines, whereupon Mazda fitted the 135ps 13B rotary engine. Designed to take on the grandly named Toyota Century, Nissan President and Isuzu Statesman De Ville, the Road Pacer AP featured luxuries such as speed related central locking and even an inbuilt dictation machine.”
The car was only sold for three years – 1975 to 1977. Just 800 were sold, only in Japan.
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Nissan wasn’t the only automaker with a Pathfinder. The Mazda Pathfinder (shown above) was a 4×4 exclusively assembled and sold in Burma. It gained popularity with the military and police who appreciated its rugged off-road abilities. It was powered by a 90ps engine and came with a canvas roof or as a fully enclosed nine-seat model. A few can still be seen on the roads of Myanmar.
Photo courtesy of Mazda Motor Corporation
It wasn’t just the 70s that gave the world unique Mazda cars. In 1984 the company officially changed its name to Mazda and in 1991 the Mazda Suitcase Car was born. The Australian-based limousine came about thanks to the 1991 “Fantasy yard” event – an inter-departmental contest to see which group of Mazda employees could come up with the most innovative and creative solution to produce a moving machine.
More go kart than passenger car, the model was the brainchild of seven Mazda engineers from Mazda’s manual transmission testing and research group. They purchased the largest Samsonite suitcase they could find and a quarter size pocket motorbike and set to work.
To construct the model, engineers put the rear wheels into slots onto the outside of the case, while the front wheel popped through a removable hatch in the front. The suitcase car took mere minutes to assemble and had a top speed of 19 mph.
Sadly, the original prototype was accidentally destroyed just a few months after the “Fantasy Yard” event, however, one Mazda suitcase car still remains in existence.
Photo courtesy of Mazda Motor Corporation
Inn 1993, a collaboration with the London Royal College of Art resulted in a taxi concept (shown above) designed to operate in the future where space would restrict vehicle size. Though it wasn’t an official Mazda concept, Mazda assisted by building the prototype, which was a futuristic looking narrow-track pod shaped mini-car.
