Mazda is now 100 Years Old

Mazda is now celebrating its 100 years anniversary.

That's a century ago, when the company was orignally a cork maker company, called Toyo Cork Kogyo Corp. Ltd., in 1920.

Ever since the ups and downs in the corporate restructuring, in 1931 Toyo Cork Kogyo saw the eventual birth of Mazda as a focused automaker company, with Mazda-Go auto rickshaw, as to serve the military needs during the era of expansion of territory by the former Empire Of Japan.

Jujiro Matsuda (1875 - 1952) , founder of Mazda Motor Corporation

Under the leadership of blacksmith that makes a handmade swords to founding an organization that eventually ventured into an industrial-based businesses, Jujiro Matsuda was the founding father of Mazda Motor Corporation who also saw a radical changes into the Toyo Cork Kogyo Corp, from its main business in what he considered as "unprofitable" in cork-making industry, to finding an opportunity for filling up the industrial needs in military contract, and restructuring of badly-bombed Hiroshima, all from the subsidiaries of Toyo Cork Kogyo, the Mazda Motor Corporation.

Later on, Mazda Motor Corporation would be the main focus of the former Toyo Cork Kogyo, which its commitment to solely focused on motor vehicle production as its main priority of business.

As an icon to the city of Hiroshima, Mazda is the company that revived the spirit of once badly-bombarded city of Hiroshima that only saw an ashes without any future. Mazda's automobile manufacturing effort for production saw an emerging rises into a rapid development of restructring of the capital region in term of economic expansion towards the livelihood of the people around the Hiroshima, and later on, gaining a status as a city once again, after the World War II's bombing which crippled out the city historically.

In the era of Japanese's monumental economic expansion toward the 80's, Mazda, just like the others Japanese automakers, invested heavily in the western hemisphere market. Particularly around the world biggest market, the North American.

On that era, Mazda oversaw its western-sided investment for market expansion under tied partnership with Ford Motor Company, and later on campaigned in many production car's based motorsports event around the world. Internationally.

To these days, Mazda's epitome on the continuously developing the wankel-derived "Rotary Engine", which the company obtained the technology in the 50's through the license of NSU-Volkswagen and its creator, Felix Wankel, continued the world fascination with the company and the future of such technology offered on wider scales of application.

1967 Mazda Sport Cosmo in Mazda Hiroshima collection gallery. It was the car that started the development of rotary engine to be taken seriously, by Mazda and its engineering team. To these days, Mazda is the only successful company in term of marketing the usability and the engineering prowess of Wankel's rotary engine design.

The RX sportscars series, which RX stood for "Rotary eXperimental", is a crown series of lighweight sportscars model that continues to fascinated the world of automobile and its fans all-around the world. Started mainly as a pure engineering expression for a research of Wankel's rotary engine design with Mazda Cosmo Sport in 1967, its the car that started the legacy of RX-series sportscar that these days is known as Mazda's very own legacy and hallmark among the global automakers players, respectively.

Renown-Charge/Mazdaspeed Racing Corporation's 787B Group C racer at 24 Hours of Le Mans, 1991.

No others automakers that as sucessful as Mazda when it come to promoting the Wankel engine. Through the 80's and 90's, the motorsports arena served the company as its benchmark platform to test the breakthrough and engineering improvement over the original rotary engines design. With such, Mazda also won the internationally acclaimed Le Mans 24 Hours races as an overall winner in 1991 with its own rotary-engined racers, the 787 series sport-prototype racing car.

The 3rd generation Mazda RX-7 sportscar (dubbed as RX-7 FD due to its chasis code designation FD3S), which hailed as the greatest rotary-powered sportscar ever made in the world. Built upon the principle of combining the power of compact 2 rotor rotary engine that boasted-up with twin sequential turbocharging system, it also among the lightest sportscar that offered a neutral and nimble handling characteristic that was a desired by many competitive auto enthusiast around the world, while clothed in extremely beautiful bodywork that has often been considered by auto journalist as a "timeless beauty".

The success also translated within the consumer market when the final iteration of Mazda's RX-7 sportscars was released in 1992, under the all-new chassis and technology, dubbed as "FD" for its chassis internal design code.

The 2012 Mazda RX8 R3. The RX8 served as a spiritual succesor to the RX7 when it was introduced in 2003. Focusing on new development of rotary engine architectures which forgoing the application of turbochargers, the all new RENESIS engine is an all-new rotary engine design with revised porting, and engine housing design altogether. With intention of developing Hydrogen-powered rotary-engine as the motivation to the all-new engine's architectures, the RX8 are stayed within the roots of Mazda's RX-sportscar heritage, with handling and driving finess are always the package to be delivered.
The true 4-seaters within grand touring layout, the RX8 is capable for a balanced handling feels thanks to the lightweight rotary engine packages, well-balanced weight distribution all-around, and aluminum construction that involved around the main structural chassis design.

While the production of the iconic turbocharged-fury, rotary-powered RX-7 FD finally ended in 2002, the successor, called RX8, continued the tradition of Mazda's flagship engineering department which solidify their status in preserving the wankel's rotary engine technology to stay in the most demanding automotive engineering landscapes, present and future.

After 2012 final runs of the iconic RX8, which is the final mass-produced rotary engine-powered vehicle to be produced globally, its again, cemented Mazda as a daring automotive company, that eager to find their own path rather than following the current that sets by the others, to stand out proud by its heritage of making an extraordinary feat by staying commited from such a humble starts.

From a cork businesses, to the remaking of the once-destroyed city and enriching its population with renewed aspiration, to venturing into something that no one would dared at first places, and eventually succeeded in doing so, its was the "Spirit To Win" that what Mazda is all about.

Happy 100th Anniversary, Mazda! May the "Zoom-Zoom" lived forever!


Official Mazda 100th Anniversary






https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/classic/1968-mazda-cosmo-driving-rotary-engined-pioneer-now-worth-fortune/