What’s happening with mainstream Mazdas?

LAST year Mazda continued its nearly decade-long run of being the second-most popular car brand in Australia, a position it won way back in 2015 when it stole the silver medal from Holden.

It was a remarkable effort given the sheer density of marques in this country, but a feat made all the more impressive given the age of a great many Mazda models – in particular, those which sit in the meatiest parts of the mainstream segment.

Mazda is also achieving great things in the United States, its fresh-faced CX-50 and CX-90 SUVs clearly resonating with new car buyers over there while a cast of wrinkly mainstream models continues to trundle out of showrooms at a steady pace.

But does Mazda have a product problem looming on the horizon? Of late, much of the messaging has been around the CX-60 and CX-90, both of which launched in the middle of 2023 and debuted a number of ‘firsts’ for the company.

Both also occupy the top end of Mazda’s price spectrum, are very much pitched at premium customers and will be followed by the CX-70 (a two-row CX-90 by another name) and the still-to-be-unveiled CX-80 (which is expected to be a three-row CX-60 variant).

As high-end SUVs that have more in common with a BMW X5 than they do with a Kluger, it is certainly an achievement for Mazda to have brought them to market – but what is going to follow them, and how long will car buyers have to wait for some new mainstream Mazda metal to arrive?

Ranked by age, the Mazda6 should by rights be the first in line for an all-new replacement. Now entering its 12th year of production the 6 has aged well, but with no hybrid option let alone any potential for further electrification, it is not the right kind of machine to represent Mazda in the sedan segment for the remainder of the 2020s.

Yet while a tasty low-slung four-door concept dubbed the Vision Coupe teased a high-end reboot of the 6 (or perhaps a modern successor to the 929), Mazda has been quiet on its plans for a continuation of the 6 nameplate.

The Japanese automotive press has reported that the next-generation 6 will adopt the Large Product platform that underpins the CX-60, as well as its turbocharged inline six and rear-biased driveline, but those are still rumours that have yet to be confirmed by Mazda.

For now, the Mazda6 is expected to soldier on in its present form for at least another year, if not more.

If the rumours prove true and the 6 gets reincarnated as a longitudinally-engined turbo six-cylinder premium sedan, that would probably be good business sense on the part of Mazda – the BMW 3 Series offers that same configuration and last year moved twice as many units in Australia as the Mazda6 did, and it likely did so with a fatter per-unit margin as well.

Aussie buyers jonesing for a modern performance sedan from somewhere other than Germany would probably enjoy it too.

But instead of a new 6, the next Mazda to get a full-model changeover will be the CX-5, which is now in its seventh year of production. In late 2022 Mazda confirmed a successor for the CX-5 was in the works, with a showroom roll-out expected in 2025.

Expected to be the first model to utilise Mazda’s new scalable electric-ready architecture, recent comment by Mazda personnel suggests the yet-to-be-named midsize SUV (a CX-6 has been rumoured) may also boast extreme powertrain flexibility, with the option of conventional and mild hybrid, plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and battery electric (BEV) mechanicals, depending on market.

Late last year Mazda North America CEO Tom Donnelly confirmed that the brand is planning to launch an electric crossover in 2025. Unless Mazda is developing this in parallel with the CX-5’s replacement, it seems fair to assume that they are the same car.

To date, Mazda’s only production BEVs have the MX-30 Electric – which is built on the combustion-centric Small Product platform and was withdrawn from the Australian market due to meagre sales performance – and an all-electric version of the CX-30 for the Chinese market.

However there’s another Mazda that could be a solid candidate for an electrified resurrection in 2025 – the CX-3. The current CX-5 might be old but the CX-3 is even older, having launched in Australia way back in 2015 and due to celebrate its tenth birthday this year.

As a commercially critical model for Mazda – in Australia, it was the second-most popular Mazda last year despite its age – a new-generation CX-3 arguably would not take too long to pay back its development debt, even with the added cost of a fully-electrified powertrain.

But wider-scale electrification of the Mazda range is not planned until later this decade. 

Under Mazda’s mid-term management plan that was announced in November 2022, the company is largely keeping its electric vehicle powder dry until the second phase of the plan, which spans from 2025 to 2027.

The electric crossover referenced by Mr Donnelly is likely going to be the first of those second-phase BEVs – the bulk of which aren’t set to arrive until the second half of that phase in 2026-2027. 

It’s worth noting that three BEVs based on the existing Small Product platform that underpins the CX-30, CX-50, Mazda 3 and MX-30 were previously put on a pre-2025 launch timeline, and while the CX-30 and MX-30 now have purely-electric variants, it’s unclear whether the third BEV model will arrive before next year – or which model it will be. 

The third phase of the mid-term plan, which runs from 2028 until 2030, will see a significant proliferation of fully-fledged BEV products from Mazda, though the brand has no plans to fully transition away from combustion engines just yet.

By 2030, Mazda expects its global BEV sales split will be somewhere between 25 and 40 per cent.

The third phase of Mazda’s management plan is also when a new-generation MX-5 is expected to arrive, which will feature styling inspired by the Iconic SP Concept revealed at the 2023 Tokyo motor show and likely powered by a petrol-electric hybrid powertrain – and possibly one with a rotary engine.

A tougher nut to crack will be how to replace the Mazda2. Like the CX-3 that it shares its underpinnings with, the Mazda 2’s age is now in double-digit territory, and while a facelift that arrived last year did its best to smooth out the wrinkles, there’s no denying the 2 has old bones.

The new scalable architecture should be able to shrink enough to accommodate a new family of B-segment hatches and SUVs, but given the first implementation of that platform isn’t due until 2025, expect the humble 2 and CX-3 to carry on for at least another year or two before replacements are announced.

With razor-thin profit margins at that end of the size spectrum, Mazda will likely want to finesse the business case for both of those models before it commits to a renewal of the 2 and CX-3 nameplates.

Are those cars hurting as a result of their age? Right now, not really. The 2 more than doubled the sales of the Toyota Yaris in 2023, and the CX-3 is the undisputed sales leader of the light SUV category.

They might be old, but they clearly still have something to offer the car-buying public.

Meanwhile the CX-30 and Mazda3 are still reasonably fresh and remain popular choices, ending 2023 in position two and three respectively in terms of sales within their segments. 

With Mazda preferring longer lifecycles than industry norms, don’t expect replacements for either of them until we’re deep into the late 2020s.

Mazda seems to enjoy going against the grain when it comes to product timelines. While the rest of the industry likes to give customers a veritable waterfall of new vehicles each year, Mazda’s product pipeline appears at times to emit a mere trickle.

That being said some of its oldest cars are also its most popular ones, and unlike some manufacturers Mazda does not lean on its BT-50 ute to keep the lights on.

If subtracting the circa-17,500 BT-50 sales it logged last year, Mazda would have dropped down the finishing order to third place. Were Ford to do the same and eliminate Ranger sales from its spreadsheet, it would have been outsold last year by Subaru.

But being able to give customers something new to play with does eventually matter, and the bulk of Mazda’s new product activity is going to happen in the latter half of this decade.

There is also the not-insignificant matter of the CX-8 and CX-9’s withdrawal from the Australian market – together they contributed over 10,000 units to Mazda Australia’s 2023 tally, and it seems unlikely that the CX-60 and CX-90 will be able to step in and pick up all of the sales slack the CX-8 and CX-9 will leave behind.

The CX-70, which so far is the only new product Mazda has committed to launching locally in 2024, is not due to arrive until the final quarter, so its impact on the sales sheet will be marginal at best.