Mazda’s Salamanca plant is adding the CX-30 to its production line, ensuring its cars-and-crossovers strategy launches as planned. With the Mexican facility already manufacturing the Mazda3, it’s not a shock to see the compact added to the factory lineup as the pair utilize the same platform. In fact, Salamanca is already undergoing retooling to make sure it can incorporate the CX-30 and there were swirling rumors that the company’s official factory announcement would happen sometime this month.
While no formal announcement has been made, the company confirmed the move with Automotive News on Wednesday. Miguel Barbeyto, president of Mazda Mexico, said the facility had been selected partially due to the CX-30’s role as a global product. Mexico has free-trade agreements with numerous nations that Mazda believes will help it efficiently distribute Mexican-made product throughout Europe and North/South America.
From Automotive News:
The Salamanca plant has a capacity of 250,000 vehicles a year and also builds subcompact cars: the Mazda2 sedan and hatchback and the Toyota Yaris sedan and hatch. Mazda and Toyota have a production agreement at the plant, and the Yaris is a slightly modified version of the Mazda2.
Mazda also is building a U.S. plant in a joint venture with Toyota Motor Corp. that will produce a different Mazda crossover beginning in 2021. Mazda has not announced that vehicle, but it’s likely to be bigger than the CX-5 and smaller than the three-row CX-9. Toyota will build a distinct crossover that it also has not announced.
Slotted just above the subcompact CX-3, the CX-30 is intended to help Mazda maximize plant utilization. But with the popularity of traditional cars waining, it’s more likely to take center stage at the facility. Barbeyto even said the super-sexy Mazda3 hatchback would be moving out of Mexico and into Japan to help make room for the new crossover.
It’ll be hitting our streets in 2020, equipped with Mazda’s new Skyactiv-X engine. Older gasoline and diesel power plants will also be available, though not in all markets.
[Images: Mazda]
Intrigued by this car. 4 time Mazda owner and hatchback fan. The 3 hatchback disappoints me. I just can’t get over the limited rear and side visibility. I’m a city dweller and driver and I need to have good 365 situational awareness in all traffic preferably without the aid of cameras.
Also, 4-time Mazda owner. Looks like Mazda did everything to p1$$ off their best customers (me) to the limit. I always bought Mazda for being cheap tossable ride with good handling and perfect control calibration; that also came with MT and “all you need-nothing you don’t” packaging, while being built in Japan with best precision, you will not find on any cars built in US/Mexico. Now, they took all these qualities away. And I am no longer interested.
This particular car would be exactly what I like – a small-but-not-too-small hatch, which I am not going to buy for reasons stated above. The only positive in this story – I don’t really need a new car for the foreseeable future. Next week my kid goes to college and I already will have one too many Mazdas.
You might want to look at Corolla hatch then. That’s also on my list.
Nah. Everyone complained that Mazda3 was small. Corolla hatch is even smaller. I want to buy 2013 Mazda3 hatch for my Judgement day car. I like those
I was going to suggest the same thing. A “Mazda guy” I work with, bought the Corolla over the new 3, specifically for visibility reasons. But I guess The Corolla is still smaller, even if more efficiently packaged. It can’t be that much smaller though, as the guy I’m referring to nixed my suggestion to look at a FiST because it was “too small,” and he needed a “Golf sized” car.
When I move from my daily driver to my 2007 Subaru Impreza, I’m amazed at how easy it is to see out of the Subie. I get that there are a lot more passive and active safety features in new vehicles, but you just can’t buy that sort of safety feature in ANY modern car. I’ll take visibility over cameras any day of the week.
I’m choosing to keep my 2016 3 hatch at the end of the lease rather than move into a new one since leap of faith lane changes on the highway don’t really interest me.
Nice looking car and might be just the vehicle to bridge the sedan/crossover void. I like it :)
I thought the CX-5 was kinda small but now there are two, count ’em two, models smaller of essentially the same thing? Waht?
And a totally different CX-4 model that will not be available here, for some reason.
You get a tiny CUV! And you get a tiny CUV! You get a tinier CUV!
EVERYONE GETS A TINY CUV!!!
I don’t think the CX-4 is actually that much smaller than the CX-5 (I’ve seen it in China), but it does look a sleeker and less egg-shaped than most crossovers. It mostly accomplishes this by making the windows terribly narrow.
How much are the workers paid at the Salamanca plant?
Mazda: “If we keep digging deep enough and flipping the harvested matter against the wall, something – SOMETHING – will stick and arrest our falling USDM volumes.”
I am not a Mazda guy but those tail lights look like rocket/jet engine exhausts. It should be a Pontiac. Why Mazda just do not rename it self to Pontiac.