{"id":20219,"date":"2017-03-06T11:05:19","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T15:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=20219"},"modified":"2017-03-06T11:05:19","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T15:05:19","slug":"tiny-mazda-stands-tall-among-giants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/tiny-mazda-stands-tall-among-giants","title":{"rendered":"Tiny Mazda stands tall among giants"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"4Mazda_MX-5RF\"<\/p>\n<\/div>

In the land of automotive Goliaths, David is still holding his own.<\/p>\n

This week Consumer Reports released its widely consulted 2017 Annual Top Picks<\/a>, and once again luxury automakers and corporate leviathans dominated the Top 10 brands list: Audi and Porsche (both owned by giant Volkswagen Group), BMW, Lexus (colossus Toyota\u2019s luxury brand), Honda and General Motors\u2019 Buick.<\/p>\n

But at a time when emissions regulations, safety rules and driver-assist features have driven auto developments costs sky-high, the smallest mainstream automaker in the U.S. \u2014 Mazda \u2014 stood out at No. 7. Mazda was one of only three brands \u2014 luxury titans Porsche and BMW being the others \u2013 to land a Consumer Reports recommendation on every vehicle it produced.<\/p>\n

Like Japan\u2019s Subaru at No. 5 among brands (an independent whose 615,132 cars sold in the U.S. last year was roughly double that of Mazda), Hiroshima-based Mazda has made its mark with outstanding quality and distinctive products. It\u2019s a business model that holds lessons for other automakers in the dog-eat-car U.S. market, says Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports\u2019 director of auto testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cMazda both benefits and is hurt by its small size,\u201d says Fisher. \u201cIts size makes it a challenge to work out the resources to produce new cars and new platforms. But the benefit to not being a full-line automaker is that they can concentrate on getting a few powertrains and platforms right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fisher contrasts Mazda\u2019s success with the small Chrysler brand, which has struggled to break Consumer Reports\u2019 Top 20 even with the resources of Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles. The Detroit brand rose seven places in this year\u2019s survey to No. 19 on the strength of the Chrysler Pacifica, just one of two vehicles it still produces (the Chrysler 300 is the other). Its sister Fiat brand came in dead last on the list.<\/p>\n

\u201cChrysler\u2019s potpourri of platforms are all over the map,\u201d says Fisher. \u201cSome are home-grown, some were built with Mercedes, others with Fiat. Their crazy history has made it more difficult to build consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mazda\u2019s brand is built on core platforms, on the iconic Miata sports car and on a Japanese brand-philosophy \u2014 hashiru yorokobi<\/em> \u2014 that translates to \u201cthe joy of driving.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a philosophy based on human-centered development,\u201d says Mazda research and development engineer Stan Hortinela. \u201cWe look at all the senses: touch, smell, sight, sound. How do you take an inanimate object and communicate to the driver in such a way that they don\u2019t have to do so much work?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hortinela continues that \u201cwe focus on things like minimum jerk theory that is about the rate of change of acceleration. That determines smoothness. It\u2019s like Japan\u2019s high-speed trains \u2014 they get up to speed very quickly but you never recognize the speed from zero until you\u2019re going over 100 miles per hour. We want to get the car to react in a way to tell your body to be prepared for movement \u2014 but not in a way that you\u2019re surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this attention to detail that has given Mazda consistently strong scores across all factors Consumer Reports looks at, from customer satisfaction to road tests to safety to reliability.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven the Miata sports car has excellent long-term reliability and fuel efficiency,\u201d says Consumer Reports\u2019 Fisher,\u201d which are not normally high on the list of sports car buyers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mazda\u2019s halo vehicle, the best-selling sports car ever, is an example of the cost pressures on the small company<\/a>. Vice President of U.S. Operation Robert David says Mazda could not have built its latest-generation Miata without partnering with Fiat. Mazda has entered other partnerships with big players like Toyota to share costs on new self-driving and battery technologies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, its core investment goes to critically acclaimed \u201cdriver\u2019s cars\u201d across an eight-vehicle range that includes sedans and its best seller, the CX-5 SUV. Mazda uses its cache as a performance brand to play in a more premium space occupied by luxury brands, while keeping costs down.<\/p>\n

\u201cMazda takes a much more conservative approach than other companies, but often with the same benefits,\u201d says Fisher. \u201cFord, for example, made huge fuel economy investments in transmissions and turbochargers which have not panned out in reliability and fuel efficiency. Mazda has been making do with six-speed transmissions and non-turbos while still delivering on performance and mpg results.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes,\u201d he concludes of Mazda\u2019s David vs. Goliath act, \u201cit helps to do more with less.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the land of automotive Goliaths, David is still holding his own. This week Consumer Reports released its widely consulted 2017 Annual Top Picks, and once again luxury automakers and corporate leviathans dominated the Top 10 brands list: Audi and Porsche (both owned by giant Volkswagen Group), BMW, Lexus (colossus Toyota\u2019s luxury brand), Honda and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20220,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20219\/revisions\/20220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}