Market Insight: Mazda’s consolidation plan
BY SCOTT NEWMAN | 28th Oct 2024
MAZDA is on track to crack the 100,000 sales barrier again in 2024 thanks to the popularity of its ever-expanding SUV line-up. As of September 30, its year-to-date total of 73,487 vehicles puts it in third place overall with 7.9 per cent market share, just 1077 deliveries behind Ford.
However, Mazda Australia managing director Vinesh Bhindi says the brand’s sales-table ranking is not a priority.
While extrapolating Mazda’s YTD figure to a full 12 months would seem to land it just short of a six-figure total for the full year, its final quarter will be bolstered by the arrival of the CX-70 and, in particular, CX-80.
The latter will fill a void left by the CX-8 and CX-9 large SUVs that have ended production and largely met a different market to the CX-90 flagship for which entry pricing is similar to a top-spec CX-9 and reaches into six-figure territory.
Mazda has hovered around the 100,000 sales mark since 2012, exceeding it in a purple patch between 2015-18 – including a peak of 118,217 sales in 2016 – with a pandemic-induced low of 85,640 in 2020.
Australia is a hugely important market for the brand, representing nearly eight per cent of its global sales in 2023.
What this relatively stable run belies is the sizeable shake-up its model mix has undergone during that timeframe. A decade ago, its passenger cars contributed 62,620 sales, whereas so far this year the Mazda 2 (light), Mazda 3 (small) and Mazda 6 (medium) have managed just 13,099 units.
This is despite the Mazda 2 holding solid, up 1.6 per cent YoY with 19.7 per cent share of the light car market, and the Mazda 3 performing strongly, up 13.5 per cent.
Another steady performer is the BT-50 ute, its 11,614 sales (combined 4x4 and 4x2) in 2024 are down around 14 per cent on 2023 ahead of the facelifted model’s arrival in Q1 2025, but it consistently adds 12000-13,000 sales per annum without turning Mazda into “a ute company” in the words of Mr Bhindi.
Mazda’s star performer is the CX-3. Despite being in its 10th year of production, continual updates have resulted in it dominating the light SUV segment with a 33.5 per cent share, more than doubling offerings from Toyota, Hyundai and Kia.
Despite its age, a new-generation CX-3 is not imminent. Mr Bhindi told GoAuto "there’s a bit of life left in the current one and we have some plans”.
Based on the sales figures, it is difficult to disagree, with Mazda’s smallest SUV in with a shout of recording its best sales year ever.
It is a similar story with the CX-30 small SUV and CX-5 medium SUV. While neither are the freshest models on the block, the CX-30 appearing in 2020 and the CX-5 way back in 2017, both are up YoY and sit fourth and third in their respective segments.
This broad spread of SUV popularity has enabled Mazda to replace the sales lost by its passenger cars or, perhaps more accurately, successfully steer buyers looking to move into an SUV toward other models in its range.
It is hoping its premium push will deliver similar results, with the CX-60, CX-70, CX-80 and CX-90 not only retaining CX-8 and CX-9 customers, but those who feel they have outgrown the brand.
“We knew that we were losing customers beyond CX-5 – we had premium outflows,” said long-serving Mazda Australia marketing director Alastair Doak.
“People were moving up the scale and we were losing them, so CX-60 gave us a destination beyond CX-5.”
It is a strategy that appears to be working, with Mazda’s smallest ‘premium’ SUV settling at between 350-400 units a month, securing it second place in the medium SUV above $60K segment behind the Lexus NX, though this ignores the Tesla Model Y which, with four times the sales of the Lexus, is virtually a segment unto itself.
Mazda’s flagship CX-90 is a slower mover, with 750 having found homes this year. Around 12,000 sales a year will be lost by the departure of the CX-8 and CX-9 and of the two forthcoming SUVs, the large five-seat CX-70 and seven-seat CX-80, it is the latter that will be expected to pick up the majority of the slack.
Australia is one of very few markets to be offering all four models, but Mr Doak told GoAuto there is a clear distinction between them.
“CX-60 gave us a destination beyond CX-5 and then we got offered CX-70, which gives us a destination beyond that again – that is our flagship five-seater,” he said.
“So you can go from entry CX-3 to CX-30 to CX-5 to CX-60 to CX-70, that fills a lot of life stages, a lot of price points and gives people all those choices. You can follow that trajectory up and be with Mazda forever.
“For three rows, obviously we had CX-9 and CX-9 and then ultimately they had to go, so we’re now about to have CX-80 and CX-90 and they have a similar relationship between those two models.”
But why offer the five-seaters instead of just the three-row versions like with CX-8 and CX-9?
“In our experience, if you don’t need a three-row, people didn’t tend to buy a three-row and then fold the back seat and never use it,” said Mr Doak.
In layman’s terms, instead of loyal Mazda buyer growing out of their CX-5 and then treating themselves with a BMW X3 or X5, for instance, the brand now offers the CX-60 and CX-70. The CX-80 is intended to retain those customers who went for a CX-8 or CX-9, while the CX-90 could tempt Mazda customers away from something like an Audi Q7, so has the same relationship to the CX-8 and CX-9 as the CX-60 does to the CX-5.
However, the brand’s future success will rely on its core models being refreshed and the rapid rollout of electrification beyond its current solitary Mazda CX-60 plug-in hybrid model, in order to meet the forthcoming New Vehicle Emissions Standard.