Mazda to stop building commercial vehicles

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Mazda Australia says the BT-50 is still safe.
Neil Dowling
Contributing Journalist
26 Mar 2012
1 min read

The brand will turn all its attention to passenger cars, and stop building commercial vehicles. 

Facing a huge annual loss - estimated at about $1.2 billion - Mazda is poised to end development and production of new commercial vehicles for the Japanese market. 

Mazda's workhorse models have dwindling demand in Japan and new vehicles will mean a major financial investment.

Mazda, which is expected to announce next week its financial loss for the March 2011-2012 period, rebadges trucks made by Isuzu, commercial vans from Nissan and small commercial vehicles from Suzuki. 

However, Mazda made no mention of discontinuing commercial vehicle sales outside of Japan.

Mazda Australia spokesman Steve Maciver says there are no plans to stop BT-50 - a joint venture vehicle with Ford's Ranger made in Thailand - production of sales.

"It doesn't have any effect on Mazda Australia as the BT-50 will continue to be sold,'' he says of the plans in Japan.

Mazda plans to focus on passenger vehicles and expand its fuel-efficient Skyactiv technology across more car models.

Skyactiv is currently in the Mazda3, CX-5 and later this year in the replacement Mazda6.

Neil Dowling
Contributing Journalist
GoAutoMedia Cars have been the corner stone to Neil’s passion, beginning at pre-school age, through school but then pushed sideways while he studied accounting. It was rekindled when he started contributing to magazines including Bushdriver and then when he started a motoring section in Perth’s The Western Mail. He was then appointed as a finance writer for the evening Daily News, supplemented by writing its motoring column. He moved to The Sunday Times as finance editor and after a nine-year term, finally drove back into motoring when in 1998 he was asked to rebrand and restyle the newspaper’s motoring section, expanding it over 12 years from a two-page section to a 36-page lift-out. In 2010 he was selected to join News Ltd’s national motoring group Carsguide and covered national and international events, launches, news conferences and Car of the Year awards until November 2014 when he moved into freelancing, working for GoAuto, The West Australian, Western 4WDriver magazine, Bauer Media and as an online content writer for one of Australia’s biggest car groups. He has involved himself in all aspects including motorsport where he has competed in everything from motocross to motorkhanas and rallies including Targa West and the ARC Forest Rally. He loves all facets of the car industry, from design, manufacture, testing, marketing and even business structures and believes cars are one of the few high-volume consumables to combine a very high degree of engineering enlivened with an even higher degree of emotion from its consumers.
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