Mazda In The Spotlight

The company has a history of innovative technology and produces highly capable bakkies. By Jake Venter.

- Jake Venter

The Mazda Motor Corporation was founded in 1920 not as a motor manufacturer but as a maker of cork products! It was called Toyo Cork Kogyo (Far-Eastern Cork Manufacturing). The bottom soon fell out of this market, however, and the company’s president, Jujiro Matsuda, switched production to machine tools, dropping ‘Cork’ from the name.

In 1931, the company ventured into motorised transport, introducing a tricycle truck. The name chosen for it was Mazda-go, after Ahura Mazda, the Persian god of light, and Matsuda, pronounced much like ‘Mazda’ in Japanese. (Interestingly, it took the company itself 53 years to finally change its name to ‘Mazda’!)

CARS AND TRUCKS

Toyo Kogyo launched its first prototype car in 1940, but World War II interrupted development. After the war, the company began building commercial vehicles and by the end of the 1950s had 30 models in its line-up.