Mazda Production History : 1998-2019

It's not easy to be a small mainstream vehicle manufacturer. The recent investment and tie up with Toyota will help immeasurably, assistance with hybrid technology perhaps the main one. Mazda seems to have realised that the everyday car market is too crowded and profit margins rather thin so moving upmarket is the way to go.

When it comes to manufacturing, it has always relied heavily on domestic production. The size of the company allowed that. The downsides are a Yen moving upwards leaves them vulnerable and some markets can only be accessed through local manufacturing. Overseas plants are China, Thailand, Mexico and Vietnam.

Back in 1998, just 13% of production volume was overseas but by 2004 it passed 25%. In 2010 it hit 30% and 2017 40% was reached. The last two years have seen reductions in the volume at overseas plants and the percentage has dropped back to 32%. It seems that is largely due to the Chinese market.

	Yr	Domestic	Overseas	Total	+/-	% OS
	98	838,179	125,495	963,674	-	13%
	99	781,491	149,975	931,466	-3%	16%
	00	778,140	153,020	931,160	0%	16%
	01	729,279	139,478	868,757	-7%	16%
	02	773,798	169,540	943,338	9%	18%
	03	801,084	240,821	1,041,905	10%	23%
	04	818,730	315,691	1,134,421	9%	28%
	05	864,929	281,216	1,146,145	1%	25%
	06	966,547	318,773	1,285,320	12%	25%
	07	995,511	291,297	1,286,808	0%	23%
	08	1,078,690	270,584	1,349,274	5%	20%
	09	717,175	266,692	983,867	-27%	27%
	10	912,836	394,704	1,307,540	33%	30%
	11	813,302	352,289	1,165,591	-11%	30%
	12	845,550	343,733	1,189,283	2%	29%
	13	966,628	297,545	1,264,173	6%	24%
	14	934,300	394,126	1,328,426	5%	30%
	15	972,237	568,339	1,540,576	16%	37%
	16	977,376	608,637	1,586,013	3%	38%
	17	971,455	636,147	1,607,602	1%	40%
	18	996,264	600,503	1,596,767	-1%	38%
	19	1,010,275	477,642	1,487,917	-7%	32%

On top of the poor financial performance Mazda experienced toward the end of 2019, the global economy is going through times of extreme turmoil in 2020 as we all know only too well. In tough times, you need a good friend to help you through them and Toyota may just be that friend.

Data source: Mazda.