The '95 Protegé is significantly larger than last year's model in every dimension, but a taller, rounder greenhouse makes it appear the same size or even smaller. Yet it casts a smaller shadow than the Neon. In interior space, the new car surpasses the class-leading Neon by three or four cubic feet. Owners might wish to distinguish their cars in mall parking lots by attaching "Flush Rush" bumper stickers and neon-pink wiper cozies.Īs for company founder Jujiro Matsuda's battle cry for uniqueness, Mazda is counting on exceptionally spacious accommodations to serve as the Protegé's trump card. In fact, the Protegé's sleek ovoid lines make it resemble at least half of its principal competitors. The new car appears to have been carefully designed and engineered not to offend anyone.
It's goodbye kansei and hello hibiki-though we're not sure what that means, the message seems to be "make it just feel right to everyone." A new design philosophy buzzword was coined along the way. To put the Mazda ship back on course, the company has shaken up senior management, undergone a serious downsizing aimed at reducing fixed costs, and revamped the entire product design process. Power survey (taken after a year of ownership). And an improvement is needed here-last year, Mazda ranked 28th of 32 manufacturers in customer satisfaction, according to a J.D. To do so in its highly competitive market segment, the car must offer strong value and high quality. So this new Protegé needs to hit a worldwide home run. Those niche cars that we love so much don't pay the rent, and the bread-and-butter Protegé and 626 sedans haven't been selling strongly enough to take up the slack. But the main problem is Mazda's product mix.
And Japan is Mazda's largest market, so rising economic tides elsewhere in the world are slow to buoy the corporate ship. That leaves the company vulnerable to poor exchange rates. Most Mazdas are made in Japan-80 percent of export sales are vehicles assembled in the home country. The strong yen and a lingering sales slump in the Japanese market have hit Mazda particularly hard. It's not so easy being unique these days. Unfortunately, despite all the glowing and flowing black ink in these pages, the ink is running red in Mazda's accounting ledgers-roughly $425 million's worth during the last fiscal year. In recent years, we've fallen in love with the Miata, gushed about the styling of the MX-6 and 929, and marveled at the Millenia's Miller-cycle engine. The Wankel-powered RX-7, for another, set enthusiast hearts aflutter in 1978 with its sleek looks, 8.5-second acceleration to 60 mph, and price under $8000. The 1967 Cosmo, for example, featured the unique twin-rotor Wankel engine. Since it began passenger-car production in 1960, Mazda has delivered on that principle. Toyo Kogyo, the company that became the Mazda Motor Corporation, was founded in 1920 on the principle that a business must provide a unique product in order to succeed.
#1995 MAZDA PROTEGE DRIVER#
From the November 1994 issue of Car and Driver