Mazda News: Mazda's Premium Ambitions for the U.S.

[William Maley]

Mazda is in the process of trying to position themselves as a premium brand that you can actually afford. Autoblog had the chance to speak with Jacques Flynn, a lead exterior designer, and Jacob Brown, a PR representative for Mazda. 

A key part of Mazda's premium plans is their Kodo design language. Flynn explained that Mazda will be simplifying and evolving the look of Kodo on their various models. A key example is the recently introduced second-generation CX-5. Compared to the outgoing model, the new CX-5 features fewer curves to make it look tauter. 

Diesel will also play a key part in Mazda's premium ambitions. Brown explained that diesel has the air of premium surrounding it as luxury automakers, for the most part, offer them in the U.S. Mazda was hoping not to use urea-injection for their diesel models, but ultimately had to give in to meet emission standards and performance benchmarks.

Those hoping that Mazda would bring back Mazdaspeed on some performance models will be disappointed to hear it could be a while before this happens. Both Flynn and Brown said the company's focus is "on making the core line-up cohesive." Being a small company, they cannot take any chances on working a number of projects at the same time since that could result in a misstep or two.

Source: Autoblog

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