Mazda managing director Craig Roberts
In 2019, Mazda decided to reposition itself in the global car market as a more premium brand. The change has seen its sales figures fall in South Africa.
Pushing the brand into a more premium position was always going to result in a sales decline, but other factors have also created challenges for Mazda since 2019.
While sales for most brands have still not reached pre-Covid levels, one of the reasons behind Mazda’s even bigger decline has been the new entrants into the market over the past few years, Mazda managing director Craig Roberts told the Mail & Guardian.
“From a Mazda perspective, we’ve been going through a brand repositioning globally and, since 2019, we’ve been moving to larger-platform vehicles. The CX-60 is actually the smallest of those larger-platform vehicles,” he said.
“So, we’ve got more challenges. With moving upmarket, and brand repositioning into higher segments, there’s less volume opportunity and pricing is much higher in those segments. So, we’ve had to balance and manage that and, essentially, we are now trying to compete on a value proposition.”
While Mazda is a legacy brand in South Africa, companies like Chery and GWM continue to sell more vehicles. In January, both Chinese brands were in the top 10 for new vehicles sold in the country, while Mazda had fallen off the list.
Roberts noted that the emergence of Chinese vehicles had also contributed to the drop in sales for legacy brands, but added that Mazda had aligned its prices more to what the Chinese manufacturers were bringing in now.
Mazda is advertising its best-selling CX-5 model for R499 000, which lines up with prices for Haval’s Jolion Pro, Chery’s Tiggo 7 Pro and Jaecoo’s J7.
While the powertrain in the CX-5 outdoes those vehicles, the technology might be where it falls behind.
Roberts acknowledged that Mazda had to update the technologies for its vehicles to keep up with competitors.
“We also are talking about a generational challenge. It is now more based around technology. Before, when you launched a car, it was all about the powertrain. We’ve had to upgrade certain technologies in the facelifts that we’ve brought in because we’ve had to adapt,” he said.
“We can’t rely on just Skyactiv reliable 2.0 litre engines anymore to sell vehicles — we have to adapt in terms of technology.”
However, despite rumours of an exit from South Africa last year, Roberts confirmed that Mazda was here to stay and would be bringing more models into the country over the next two years.
“We will bring the CX-80 plug-in hybrid this year, a new CX-5, a CX-60 plug-in hybrid by 2026 and then the Mazda 6e in 2028, to cap off this particular series of models,” he said.
Three of the four new models Mazda is bringing into the country will be new-energy vehicles. This will push the brand further into the more premium space.
Roberts said it was important for local manufacturers to embrace new-energy vehicles and build hybrid or battery-energy vehicles.
He believes that, once this happens, South Africans will begin to adopt new-energy vehicles, which should be around 2028. This is why the marque needs to phase in its new-energy vehicles from 2025, until 2028, when it introduces the all-electric Mazda 6e to South Africa.
