The Mazda Bump: What a Difference a '0' Makes

June auto sales in the hard-hit U.S. new vehicle market were nowhere near normal for this time of the year, down an estimated 25 percent below levels seen last June. An improvement from May, yes, but far from a return to normal.

Unless, of course, you’re Mazda.

The pandemic-era trend we detailed not long ago continued in June for the scrappy little automaker, with an unlikely product proving unusually popular and a much newer product doing exactly what its creators intended.

That first vehicle is the beloved MX-5 Miata. In June, Miata sales rose 27.3 percent, year over year, earning the fun roadster a 10.4-percent year-to-date sales gain in the industry’s worst sales year since the Great Recession. Maybe buyers are realizing they might now have forever to cross a certain item off their bucket list. Who knows.

The latter model is the new-for-2020 CX-30, a tweener model slotting between the tiny, weak-performing CX-3 and the brand’s sales star, the CX-5. The CX-30 is a strategic model, and it quickly proved its worth. In June, the CX-30 was Mazda’s second-best selling model, ahead of even the affordable, diverse 3 sedan and hatch. The brand sold three-and-a-half times more CX-30s than CX-3s.

Interestingly, June’s CX-30 volume of 3,526 units was within spitting distance of May’s 3,583 sales. That’s a pretty stable product in a depressed market.

And the good news for Mazda doesn’t end there. The range-topping CX-9, like in May, garnered more buyers than in the same month a year prior. CX-9 sales rose nearly 49 percent, year over year, last month. Year to date, the model’s volume is up 13.3 percent.

All of this conspired to boost Mazda’s overall volume by 10.9 percent for the month, with yearly sales thus far now down 7 percent (an improvement from May’s 10.5-percent YTD decline). The automaker’s sitting pretty compared to its larger rivals, though things aren’t entirely rosy.

Mazda’s passenger car lineup continues to contract, despite the best efforts of many people to improve the 3 and 6’s appeal. Perhaps all the 3 needs to regain momentum is a turbocharger. Doubtful. An expected swap to rear-drive and inline-six power will only make the 6 even more of a desirable rarity, this writer (sadly) predicts. The CX-3 subcompact CUV? That micro-mobile is living on borrowed time, with sales barely in the four-figure arena.

And yet a potential savior looms on the horizon in the form of a U.S.-built midsize CUV arising from a still unfinished Alabama assembly plant.

[Images: Mazda]