Mazda History

Mazda is a company the history of which started basically with cork. In fact this company founded by Jujiro Matsuda in 1920 was initially producing construction materials of cork. Matsuda, born in 1875, was the twelfth son of a fisherman in Hiroshima prefecture. Being 20 he founded a blacksmith, but soon it was closed because of unprofitableness. In 11 years he started the blacksmith business again and even took out a patent for an air-pump, but as soon as in several years the business closed again. After several more attempts of launching a business of his own Matsuda joined several other investors, and they purchased a bankrupt Abemaki company located in Hiroshima that manufactured cork products. In was renamed to Toyo Cork Kogyo; next year Matsuda was elected its president. At that time the company didn’t have any relation to automobiles and only produced cork construction materials. This business allowed laying the financial basis for further development.

In 1927 the word “cork” was excluded from the company’s name, now it was titled Toyo Kogyo, Ltd., indicating the company’s orientation towards industrial production. After releasing a small test series of motorcycles in 1920ies the company launched machine production since 1929. In 1930 one of the motorcycles they constructed even managed to win a race.

Since 1931 the company started production of automobiles of genuinely Japanese style, 3-wheeled small trucks equipped with 500 cc motors. They chose the word Mazda as its brand-name because it, being actually the named of Zoroastrian supreme god of light, sounded similar to the surname of company founder, Matsuda. Since 1932 they started exporting Mazda trucks to China. Before the World War II started the company constructed several concept Kogyo passenger cars, but their batch production didn’t have time to start because of the War.

After the War and the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima Toyo Kogyo fortunately was demolished only partially, so as soon as in 1950 the company launched production of 3-wheeled trucks with 1157 cc motors, titled Kogyo Type CT, compact fire-engines and ordinary trucks. In 1952 Jujiro Matsuda died; the year before his son Tenuji became the president of Kogyo Company. The company started producing passenger cars only after 1960, when the ordinary Japanese became well-to-do enough.

The first model released was Kogyo R360, a 2-door city-side car equipped with a 2-cylinder motor of 356 cc volume. This Kogyo wasn’t very luxurious, yet it was inexpensive and comfortable.

Besides in 1960 a series of events, which impacted the further history of Mazda Company, occurred. The headquarters of Kogyo were visited by a representative of German company NSU Dr. Haas; Kogyo president Matsuda also paid a visit to Germany, where he signed a preliminary agreement concerning collaboration of Kogyo and NSU for development and production of rotary Wankel motors.

The official ...