VITAL STATISTICS TO SMILE ABOUT

It’s all smiles at Mazda after it was announced that the Japan’s finest export has seen levels of production with Japan increase by 23.1% in April 2008 compared to April 2007. Senior staff have highlighted a surge in production since the launch of the Mazda2 supermini, recently voted 2008’s ‘World Car of the Year’ and the new look Mazda6 saloon and estate vehicles.

Total production of Mazda2 was 15,920 in April, a year-on-year increase of 165.9%, Mazda6 was up 63.1% year-on-year at 13,661 units while CX-7 saw a rise of 60.4% year-on-year to 5,191 units.

These successes helped lift Mazda’s passenger car production for the first four months of the year to 366,983 units, an increase of 22.5% over the first four months of 2007.

More importantly however, overseas production also showed healthy increases for the month, up 24.7% compared to the same month in 2007 thanks mainly to strong demand for Mazda6 (up 51.5% year-on-year at 10,475 units), BT-50 (up 30.9% at 5,787 units) and Mazda3 (up 16.3% at 3,923 units).

They may be predicting an economic slowdown, but it seems that there couldn’t be a better time to own a Mazda!