Mazda Motor Corporation (マツダ株式会社, Matsuda Kabushiki-gaisha?) (TYO: 7261) is a Japanese automotive manufacturer based in Fuchū, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan.
In 2007, Mazda produced almost 1.3 million vehicles for global sales. The majority of these (nearly 1 million) were produced in the company's Japanese plants, with the remainder coming from a variety of other plants worldwide.
The company website states that name "derives from Ahura Mazda, a god of the earliest civilizations in West Asia...the god of wisdom, intelligence and harmony..." Ahura Mazda is the Persian – Zoroastrian God. The company website also notes that the name "also derives from the name of our founder, Jujiro Matsuda."
Mazda began as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd, founded in Japan in 1920. Toyo Cork Kogyo renamed itself to Toyo Kogyo Co., Ltd. in 1927. Toyo Kogyo moved from manufacturing machine tools to vehicles, with the introduction of the Mazda-Go in 1931. Toyo Kogyo produced weapons for the Japanese military throughout the Second World War, most notably the series 30 through 35 Type 99 rifle. The company formally adopted the Mazda name in 1984, though every automobile sold from the beginning bore that name. The Mazda R360 was introduced in 1960, followed by the Mazda engines in 1962.
Beginning in the 1960s, Mazda put a major engineering effort into development of the Wankel rotary engine as a way of differentiating themselves from other Japanese auto companies. Beginning with the limited-production Cosmo Sport of 1967 and continuing to the present day with the RX-8, Mazda has become the sole manufacturer of Wankel-type engines mainly by way of attrition (NSU and Citroën both gave up on the design during the 1970s, and prototype Corvette efforts by General Motors never made it to production.)
No comments:
Post a Comment