TOKYO -- It's just a coincidence. Honest.
That's how Mazda Motor Corp. CEO Takashi Yamanouchi described his decision to kill U.S. production of the Mazda6 sedan at Auto Alliance International Inc., a factory in Flat Rock, Mich., while simultaneously announcing plans for a new plant in Mexico. The Mexican plant will not ship cars to the United States.
"The two are unrelated," Yamanouchi said today, while unveiling Mazda's forecast for the current fiscal year.
Mazda forecast that U.S. sales will climb 1 percent to 240,000 vehicles in the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2012, from 238,000 a year earlier.
"With AAI, it's a coincidence that we had to announce at a time when we had to prepare for the next model and we had to make a decision on where we'd make it," he said. "The Mexican plant, by coincidence, came at the same time."
Mazda6 leaves Michigan
The Flat Rock plant currently builds the Mazda6 sedan and Ford Mustang, but Mazda said this month that it will stop making the Mazda6 at the money-losing plant when the car's current life cycle ends, probably around 2012.
Mazda has not said whether it will build another vehicle at Flat Rock, or even whether it will keep or sell its 50 percent stake in the assembly plant. But it says it will not build the redesigned Mazda6 there.
In the first five months of this year, Mazda sold 13,604 Mazda6s in the United States, down 9 percent from a year earlier, while the overall U.S. passenger-car market rose 14 percent. In 2010, Mazda6 sales in the United States rose 2 percent to 35,662, while the overall U.S. car market rose 1 percent.
The move to shift Mazda6 output to Japan spurred speculation that Mazda would pull out completely and set up shop in a low-cost emerging market.
Mexico from 2013
Mazda unveiled plans today to build a new assembly plant in Mexico with the Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corp. Annual capacity will be 140,000 units, with output beginning in 2013.
The $500 million Mexican plant will make the Mazda2 hatchback and Mazda3 small sedan, initially for Brazil and Latin America, where Mazda is weak. Mazda will return to retailing in Brazil in 2012, after leaving in 2000.
"These initiatives are part of Mazda's plans to achieve its mid- to long-term goals for emerging markets," Yamanouchi said.
The Flat Rock plant opened as a Mazda factory in 1987. In 1992, Ford Motor Co. bought half of the operation.
Separately, Yamanouchi said Mazda production has returned to normal in Japan and overseas after the March 11 earthquake that crippled Japan's supply chain. Certain trim levels of certain models still face bottlenecks, but total volume has returned to pre-quake levels.
Mazda also forecast a 16 percent fall in operating profit this year, reflecting a stronger yen and supply chain disruptions after the earthquake.
The automaker also expects to post a net profit of 1 billion yen, a swing from a 60 billion yen loss last year.
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