Lexmex

I thought when they wanted to do this in the 90s that it was a little too late behind the Acura, Infiniti and Lexus and even those 3 were still finding their place in the marketplace, though their reliability was strongly helping them (it was a main point that sold me into Lexus later on), I just do not see this. I would have to see that Mazda themselves starts to eat a bigger market everywhere to enter the luxury market. I do not think even the Hyundai route with Genesis will do it. If they could be high for a while on reliability and get further sales, perhaps with some very unique or advanced technology or some other 'realistic gimmick' that sells, then I could see them being a success in luxury and not until.

peteharvey

Mazda confirms NO RWD-based sedan NOR coupe.

Just four RWD-based SUV's.
It's all over for Mazda.

gor134

To be fair to Mazda.. they only announced SUV reveals for this year and didn't outright say they're never launching any sedan, just that currently as stated before they're only working on the 4 RWD SUVs

sm1ke

iTrader: (5)

Critics love a good headline.

Motorola

The difference is that Genesis is helmed by one of the largest car companies in the world, the Hyundai Motor Group, and has a strong customer base in South Korea, so they have plenty of capital and demand to continue developing and selling their vehicles. All the Japanese luxury brands have to rely primarily on North America for the brunt of their sales, which was well and good in the 90s and 2000s, but now the only one truly meeting success is Lexus, and even then they and the other Japanese brands have to rely on existing cheaper mainstream brand models to base their cars off of so that they recoup their development costs. Infiniti might as well be dead when even with their decades of being in the market and their cheaper cars, they still barely outsold Genesis last year, a brand that doesn't even have a full lineup or real dealer network.

It's a completely different ballgame for Mazda. They're not switching to being a full-on luxury brand because they want to, they have to do it because it is literally the only way they can afford to survive as an independent company. Mazda needs those massive profit margins from luxury vehicle sales to stay afloat, because they are a tiny company, and don't have the ability to match any of the other mainstream brands when it comes to production volume needed to be viable in the long term. Of course, the problem with this is that they now have to not only put in the capital to be a luxury brand, they also have to somehow change the public perception of their brand to being a luxury one, which is next to impossible unless they create a new subbrand (which they have no money for, of course).

Mazda has historically never made many good financial decisions and their ability to even deliver a product on time (see: Skyactiv turbo and diesel engines) has always been questionable. Even now, the MX-60 launched in Europe has very questionable powertrain choices (why would they offer a weak naturally aspirated I6 as the base engine in a continent where every 6-cylinder is turbocharged and emissions requirements taxes the crap out of large displacement engines?). We'll see how they price their upcoming lineup for the rest of their vehicles, but if any one of these end up being flops, which may very well happen if they want to charge near-BMW prices, Mazda as a brand may tip over. That's how risky of an investment this is, especially as Mazda seems to be the Japanese brand least interested in EV's.

This was pretty obvious the moment they cancelled the 6. There is no market anywhere in the world for a Mazda-badged sedan that costs as much as a 5 Series.

mmarshall

Often true, but the MX-5 Miata was a marketing Genius.

Motorola

It's definitely the car that cemented the brand among enthusiasts, and is in a class of its own.

However, had Mazda been smarter with Amati, we could have gotten far better cars: