Mazda Taps Americas Boss As New CEO; No Shortage of Risk Lies Ahead

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

The man who spent the last five years overseeing Mazda’s North American operations will soon lead the company. Akira Marumoto, 60, takes the helm of the automaker on June 26th, the company announced Friday.

The moves comes as Mazda prepares to introduce a revolutionary type of gasoline engine, the Skyactiv-X, in the hopes of proving its complete reliance on internal combustion cars does not make it a dinosaur.

Marumoto, seen in the center of the above photo, accepted his current position in June of 2013. In succeeding president and CEO Masamichi Kogai (who becomes chairman), Marumoto must continue growing the automaker’s global sales and making the best of its strategic partnership with Toyota. It’s a good thing Marumoto knows a lot about the Americas.

Under Kogai, Mazda continued with its plan to put high-compression Skyactiv engines in all of its vehicles while moving the brand slightly upmarket. The current-generation MX-5 and CX-3 subcompact crossover appeared on his watch, while the latter vehicle’s platform mate, the Mazda 2 (Demio), arrived in the Americas as a Toyota-badged vehicle. Speaking of that automaker, the 2015 partnership came about after Mazda, being of limited resources, decided Toyota’s electrification technology could help it keep up with green vehicle expectations — while cutting down on R&D costs.

Toyota bought a 5 percent stake in Mazda last year.

Unlike other Japanese brands, Mazda’s domestic sales pale compared to those in Europe, China, and especially North America. In 2017, North American Mazda sales were more than double that of its Japanese home market. A new American-market crossover slated for a joint Mazda-Toyota plant in Huntsville, Alabama will go a long way to helping Mazda reach its global sales goal of 2 million vehicles in 2024. Or so Mazda hopes.

The split Huntsville plant starts production in 2021, with the capacity to build 150,000 of the unnamed crossovers a year. Toyota Corollas will roll out of the other half.

Before any of that happens, however, there’s a riskier debut coming down the pipe. The Skyactiv-X engine, a (mainly) sparkless gasoline compression ignition engine, arrives sometime next year in the next-generation Mazda 3. Mazda expects significant fuel economy gains from the new mill. Should the engine prove reliable and economical, Mazda will have shown that its devotion to the internal combustion engine wasn’t foolhardy.

It could be enough to cause more than a few greenies think twice about switching to a slow-charging, limited range electric vehicle. Again, Mazda hopes.

With Marumoto heading to the big office, his current job as VP and Americas boss goes to Kiyoshi Fujiwara, the company’s senior managing executive officer and R&D boss. Fujiwara will continue overseeing the R&D file.

[Image: Mazda]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Gtem Gtem on May 14, 2018

    How about a pickup truck from Mazda? Tacoma rebadge maybe?

  • SuperCarEnthusiast SuperCarEnthusiast on May 14, 2018

    Mazda is all image and no performance! Mazda will offer performance only if they are force to by competitors like Honda and Toyota! Otherwise, they advertise performance but keep the same underpowered powertrains! LOL! They think buyers are suckers and they are trying to go to the next upscale level with the same engine performance with weak acceleration other then the 2.5L turbo!

  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
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