Mazda Motor Corporation

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The 2009 Mazda RX-8.

PRNewsFoto/Mazda North American Operations/AP Images

Mazda Motor Corporation, a leading Japanese brand and automotive manufacturer, maker of Mazda passenger cars, trucks, and buses. The company is affiliated with the Sumitomo group. It is headquartered at Hiroshima.

Founded in 1920 as a cork plant, the company acquired its Tōyō Kōgyō name in 1927. In 1931 it began manufacturing its first vehicles, a line of three-wheel trucks, producing some 200,000 in the next 25 years. During World War II it provided the Japanese armed forces with these trucks as well as with rifles. The company’s factory survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima because it lay shielded behind a hill.

The company entered the passenger-car market in 1960 with the production of a coupe model; two years later sedans and station wagons came on line, and in 1964 it introduced a line of cars that were marketed in the United States. In 1967 the company committed itself to producing automobiles with the rotary-piston Wankel engine. By the early 1970s more than half of all Mazdas were equipped with the new engine. The major drawback of the Wankel engine, however, was its relatively poor fuel efficiency. With the rise in the price of gasoline in the 1970s, sales of Mazdas dropped sharply.

In the 1980s, however, the company gradually regained its fortunes. By reducing its workforce through attrition, greatly improving productivity, and turning to conventional, more fuel-efficient engines for its cars, the company became one of the largest automobile manufacturers in Japan. In 1981 it brought out a more fuel-efficient Wankel engine for some of its models. Also important to its recovery was its relationship with the Ford Motor Company. The company changed its name from Tōyō Kōgyō Company to Mazda Motor Corporation in 1984.