2008 Mazda 3 on 2040-cars

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Mazda revamping dealers with 'Retail Evolution'

Mazda introduced its Retail Revolution dealership design language 12 years ago, which focused on open-plan spaces, multimedia areas, and allowing customers to interact with the brand before needing to interact with a salesperson. Two years ago the carmaker started work on the next step in its dealership design, and the new language, called Retail Evolution, was unveiled at Mazda of Everett in Seattle, Washington. Aiming to make the Mazda brand feel more premium and increase dealer profits, it goes even further on the open-plan to create "a new level of business transparency." It's all done with a lot of black, white, raw wood, metal finishes, and a lot of glass. Mazda Lounges will offer free wi-fi, and digital displays will replace static photographs. So as not to hurt showrooms still recouping their investment in Retail Revolution, Mazda will work with dealers to figure out how best to update facilities, and the Retail Evolution has three tiers that can be adapted to particular locations. The press release is below, a couple of renderings are above. MAZDA ANNOUNCES ALL-NEW RETAIL EVOLUTION DEALERSHIP DESIGN Mazda of Everett Showcases First Ground-Up Retail Evolution Design IRVINE, Calif. (August 27, 2015) – Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) today announced its all-new dealership design, dubbed "Retail Evolution", featuring an open concept floorplan that offers a new level of business transparency, and a look and feel enhanced through the use of natural materials that results in an even more upscale decor than the company's current popular Retail Revolution design. The first Retail Evolution dealership built from the ground up to this exacting standard will be Mazda of Everett in Seattle, Wash., opening today. "Thanks to our KODO design philosophy and suite of SKYACTIV technologies, our vehicle lineup has never been stronger. We are now able to take that groundbreaking design language and translate it into our dealership experience," said Jim O'Sullivan, president & CEO, MNAO. "Retail Evolution embodies the spirit and direction of the Mazda brand, while offering an upscale experience our customers expect and deserve." Clad in premium black, clean white, and featuring new chrome Mazda signage, the new Retail Evolution Mazda dealerships will provide dealers with strong curb appeal. New materials throughout the building give dealers an upscale look and feel with warm raw-material tones of wood and metal in the showroom.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Mazda 16X rotary engine two years away, will arrive in all-new model

We last reported on Mazda's next-generation rotary engine project in June of 2012 when the automaker built its last Renesis-powered RX-8, but rumors of this new engine's development had been around way before that final car left the production line in Japan, last year.
We now have enthusiastic confirmation that this next-gen rotary engine is really and truly going forward. It is still referred to as 16X and has several priorities. First is to lower fuel consumption compared to the RX-8's engine, while still making gains in terms of performance. The second is to reduce the burning of oil that was happening at the highest revs. And the third and final priority, and perhaps most key for enthusiasts, is to give the powertrain a big torque upgrade.
What we were told by a Mazda USA insider (while we are all here together at the festivities in Monterey) is that the first application of the new 16X engine will be happening in two years' time in an as yet undisclosed new model. Oh, the mind races to our eternal Mazda wish list...