The sculptured styling of previous models remains while the new version gets a sharper face, writes Alastair Sloane
Mazda is celebrating a birthday of sorts in New Zealand - it is 40 years almost to the month since it landed its first Japanese-built car, a small rear-drive sedan badged the 1200.
It cost $2482. Back then $1 bought upwards of 350 Japanese yen, beer drinkers pretty much drank either Lion or DB, the All Blacks beat Wales, Keith Holyoake was Prime Minister, Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson was the Mayor of Auckland, the voting age was lowered from 21 to 20 - and New Zealanders sat down to delayed coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
It was the start of big things for Mazda and its mostly rear-drive line-up. It had already been assembling light commercials in New Zealand for a couple of years and the odd car had turned up from Japan under import licence restrictions.
But a freer import regime saw the arrival of models from Japan like the RX2 rotary-engined car and later the 626 sedan. The light commercial operation was shifted from Christchurch to an assembly plant in Otahuhu.
Mazda New Zealand Ltd set up shop in 1972. It built its first passenger car on July 1, 1972, from parts and panels shipped from Japan. The Mazda plant was one of 12 such assembly operations in New Zealand.
By 1975-76, Mazda had 6.4 per cent of the new car market and 6.9 per cent of commercials. By 1979, it had sold 12,000 B-series trucks, the best-selling commercials in the land.
There were hiccups along the way. Prime Minister Robert's Muldoon government in 1976 freezed prices and devalued the dollar, in a bid to ease the country's balance of payments.
Demand for new vehicles in 1977 dropped 20 per cent. Mazda sales alone slumped nearly 19 per cent. There were more than 10,000 new vehicles parked out the back of assembly plants from Auckland to Christchurch. They took more than a year to clear.
In 1979, Mazda moved part of its operation to a bigger factory at Sylvia Park, in Mt Wellington. Within a couple of years it was producing nine cars and five commercials. In 1981, it sold just over 8000 new vehicles, for 7.5 per cent of the market.
Nearly 30 years on, it still has around 7.5 per cent, although there have been good and bad years along the way and a move largely to front-drive. It joined with Ford in the late 1980s and moved assembly to Ford's Wiri plant.
Buyers were spoilt for choice. Some cars came with power steering, some without. Some had this, some had that. The Mazda 626 was pretty much the same as the Ford Telstar. The Mazda 323 was also a Ford Laser.
Mazda and Ford had 30 per cent of the New Zealand market at one stage, before the local assembly industry shut its doors 10 years ago.
Mazda and Ford parted company amicably a while back (Mazda bought back Ford's 20-odd per cent stake) but still share platforms and components. The current Mazda3 shares the previous Ford Focus platform. The second-generation Mazda3 shares its uses underpinnings with the new Ford Focus.
Mazda launched the first-generation Mazda3 in New Zealand in 2004. Since then it has sold 8920 examples, for 27 per cent of the "Zoom-Zoom" company's sales. It and the excellent Mazda2 has largely helped Mazda's climb up the sales charts to challenge - and beat - the long-time big boys, Toyota, Holden and Ford.
The new Mazda3 four-door sedan and five-door hatchback arrives at a tumultuous time. New-vehicles sales in 2009 are running on empty. Analysts have torn up earlier predictions of a 15 per cent drop on last year's 97,000 sales and are now talking new car and commercials numbers of around 76,000 for the year. That's roughly 27,000 vehicles down on a buoyant 2007, or about 500 sales a week.
Mazda NZ managing director Andrew Clearwater is ploughing on through the carnage.
"Our attitude is that it is business as usual and we are simply focusing on the opportunities a recessionary environment can provide," he said.
"Our medium-term goal in the past was to cement the brand in fourth place in the market. We achieved that in January 2008.
"Our growth has been organic and not achieved through chasing low margin, major fleet, government or rental business.
"So when we approached 2009, we told our dealers that while we couldn't forecast with any certainty the size of the industry we would be selling into, we could focus on growing our market share, so that when we came out of these recessionary times we would be in great shape with an expanded car park and the benefits that come from this.
"It would seem this approach is working. Two months out of three we have outsold General Motors Holden to take third place overall - but just as importantly our share of the market has expanded to 8.6 per cent."
The new Mazda3 retains much of the sculptured styling cues of the outgoing car but gets a sharper face. It is bigger inside and out and torsionally stronger. The sedan is 17kg and the hatchback 14kg heavier than the previous examples.
Inside, the layout is clean and well put together, but doesn't stir the emotions as much as the exterior does. It's on the road that the car really shines.
The chassis is a cracker, riding on either 15-, 16- or 17-inch rims. Mazda engineers were told to find a balance between refinement and sporty handling but went for the sportier option.
The suspension in the hatchback ironed out the worst surfaces on a test run through the Hunua Ranges and the car's rear end remained settled and poised through demanding bends. Rarely did the stability control system kick in.
The steering was sufficiently accurate and the brakes, reworked for more initial bite, remained progressive in feel and coped well with the deliberate punishment.
There are a couple of minor niggles, the higher window line that makes reversing a tad messy, especially in the sedan, being one of them.
The Mazda3 comes with the choice of two four-cylinder petrol engines: a 2-litre developing 108kW at 6500rpm and 182Nm at 4500rpm, and a 2.5-litre in the SP25 model unit putting out 122kW at 6000rpm and 227Nm at 4000rpm.
Gearboxes run to a six-speed manual and five-speed automatic with manual mode. Mazda claims fuel economy for the 2-litre of 7.9 litres/100km and a CO2 exhaust emissions rating of 187gr/km.
The Mazda3 has already proved itself as a great allrounder. The new model is even more complete - especially at the starting price of $30,895.
