Mazda boss challenges dealers and staff to hit new heights

Mazda is celebrating a flying start to 2007 with confirmation that it is not only the fastest growing brand in the UK but also the most reliable which has spurred boss Rob Lindley to tell his dealers and head office staff: This is only the beginning.

Mazda came top for the reliability of its cars between three and nine years old in a survey published this week by independent automotive warranty specialists Warranty Direct.

“Mazda has done very well over the past few years in the Warranty Direct survey and we are absolutely delighted to be top of the tree for reliability in 2007,” said Lindley, managing director of Mazda Motors UK.

And official registration figures earlier this month confirmed that over the last five years Mazda has outgrown all other car brands in the UK. In the five years since 2001 when Mazda took over the business from the MCL Group, Mazda has grown its annual sales volume by more than 35,000 units and achieved a growth rate of almost 250 per cent.

The challenge now is to keep that growth going. “The market will be fundamentally static so we will have to fight hard.

“What I am telling my team – and what I plan to tell the dealers at our annual conference in March – is that they should look at 50,000 as just the beginning, not the end.

“We achieved a 2.1 per cent passenger car share in the UK with 50,000 units in 2006. And in Scotland we already have a 2.9 per cent market share; if we repeated that in the UK as a whole we would have sold 70,000 cars not 50,000 so the growth potential is there.

“The key this year will be product. Everyone in this business is enthusiastic about new cars. Looking back to 2003 it was a really exciting year when we launched Mazda2, Mazda RX-8 and Mazda3. This year we have that thrill all over again with the Mazda CX-7 SUV Crossover and our new B-segment car.

“We have yet to explore where the Mazda brand can go in the UK with a genuine volume B?segment contender. I am telling the dealers that we will not be expanding the network apart from filling a few open points. Any network growth will be dealer growth where they expand by selling more cars and making more money basically off the same fixed cost base.”

Lindley's other challenge is to improve aftersales profitability for the dealer network. He wants dealers to encourage customers to stay in the Mazda network by offering servicing packages for vehicles that are more than three years old.