CX-50 North American Assembly - Quality?

[hoodlum]

Some interesting comments regarding the Alabama Plant. It is interesting that someone from Mazda was chosen to lead the joint plant.

With Toyota as partner, Mazda hopes to jump-start U.S. market

A decade after Mazda Motor's cars disappeared from Ford Motor's factory floors in Michigan, the Japanese automaker is once again building in the United States - this time with compatriot Toyota Motor. When the first Mazda CX-50 crossovers rolled off the assembly line at the joint Alabama plant...

finance.yahoo.com

Aihara, a 38-year veteran of Mazda, said his selection to lead the $2.3 billion, 300,000-units-a-year factory was evidence that the learning was mutual.

"Under President (Akio) Toyoda, Toyota is constantly looking to change the way it does things, and I think (by putting me in this position) he was saying, 'If there's something to be learned from Mazda, learn it.'"

BEST PRACTICES

The Huntsville, Alabama factory, which opened last year and is designed to add electric vehicles in future, contains many firsts for Mazda.

MTM tows components from on-site suppliers on linked-up tractors, saving time on loading and unloading from trucks.

The order in which the vehicles are assembled was also streamlined and machinery standardised as much as possible so Mazda and Toyota cars could eventually be built on the same line.

"There were times when we both realised that we were doing things a certain way purely out of habit," Aihara said. "And in some cases, we came up with a hybrid method bringing in techniques from both sides. That's something we wouldn't be able to do at Mazda proper."

The operation hasn't been without its hitches.

A tight labour market has meant the plant is still 900 workers short of the targeted 4,000, keeping it running at one shift instead of two. Mazda wants to boost U.S. sales by about a third to 450,000 by the middle of the decade

 

[181962]

Some interesting comments regarding the Alabama Plant. It is interesting that someone from Mazda was chosen to lead the joint plant.

With Toyota as partner, Mazda hopes to jump-start U.S. market

A decade after Mazda Motor's cars disappeared from Ford Motor's factory floors in Michigan, the Japanese automaker is once again building in the United States - this time with compatriot Toyota Motor. When the first Mazda CX-50 crossovers rolled off the assembly line at the joint Alabama plant...

finance.yahoo.com

If the link in post #14 is accurate, the assembly systems are Mazda's design:

"When it comes to retooling, [Mazda] reduced the time necessary by 80%, while the investment in that change is 90% lower."

That would account for a Mazda guy leading the joint plant and, as previously noted, why it is called Mazda Toyota Alabama and not the other way around. What does Mazda get out of it? Perhaps Toyota put up a bigger share of the $2.3 billion in capital cost that went into it.

 

[murky]

If the link in post #14 is accurate, the assembly systems are a Mazda design:

"When it comes to retooling, [Mazda] reduced the time necessary for [retooling] by 80%, while the investment in that change is 90% lower."

That would account for a Mazda guy leading the joint plant and, as previously noted, why it is called Mazda Toyota Alabama and not the other way around. What does Mazda get out of it? Perhaps Toyota put in a bigger share of the $2.3 billion in capital cost that went into it.

And maybe help with hybrid drivetrain.

 

[ceric]

Toyota will take Mazda's new inline-6 ICE in return.

 

[cx5boo333]

I owned a 2004 Sienna LE for 10 years and 150,000 miles which didn't have anything break and was still running strong when I traded it for a 2014 Sienna LE, now going on 8 years with 100,000 miles, also trouble free. Toyota had chronic problems with the sliding doors over those periods but I never had a malfunction. Got the wiring harness recall installed on the 2014 just because.

Now, these were lower trim lines with FWD. Once all kinds of other stuff gets piled on, especially electronics and electro-mechanical stuff like camera guided cruise control to take one example (with that camera providing input to other functions as well), the odds of stuff breaking goes up regardless of the maker.

Unfortunately, a lot of this stuff is standard equipment now across the industry, or comes along with a few things you might want in going above the base trim. The industry keeps adding more gremlins to chase after and mechanicals that can break. I'd have taken the blind spot detector and backup alert and Mazda could have kept the rest of the i-Sense stuff, no front camera, front radar detector or rain sensing in the windshield to break.

Just a note - you can hold down the "mode" (same button as "on") button to turn cruise control into normal without adaptive cruise control if you don't like radar cruise

 

[181962]

Just a note - you can hold down the "mode" (same button as "on") button to turn cruise control into normal without adaptive cruise control if you don't like radar cruise

That's what I do. In standard mode, hit cancel to coast down when needed, hit resume when clear to pass or hit the gas then coast down to the set point.

 

[M3SGT]

No worries whatsoever. You have the #1 and #2 most reliable manufacturers building cars together. The Mazda Mexico plant has made quality cars on par with anything from Japan.

 

[dunhillmc]

I got to sit in one the other day. It was really weird seeing the label saying, "Made by: Mazda Toyota Manufacturing"

 

[22MazdaCX5]

I got to sit in one the other day. It was really weird seeing the label saying, "Made by: Mazda Toyota Manufacturing"

Are they showing up in dealerships? Any thoughts on the car?

 

[meow_man]

Are they showing up in dealerships?

My 4 closest dealerships including the one I usually deal with, all have one showing "In Transit" with an estimated arrival date of April 2-7. Eastern PA.

 

[7eregrine]

On the general subject of whether North American manufacturing is inherently inferior, considerer the overwhelming number of Toyota vehicles sold in NA are NA built. Even the Lexus ES is built in Kentucky and the NX, NX hybrid, RX and RX hybrid are built in Ontario.

Gobsmacked that some people STILL think American workers are somehow inferior to their Japanese counterparts. I know much of this has to do with the late 80's early 90's but those crappy throwaway American cars were designed to be disposable... they weren't built that way because Americans don't build good cars.

 

[mrplt]

Gobsmacked that some people STILL think American workers are somehow inferior to their Japanese counterparts. I know much of this has to do with the late 80's early 90's but those crappy throwaway American cars were designed to be disposable... they weren't built that way because Americans don't build good cars.

Ultimately with mass-produced cars, most of the assembly is done by robots anyway. Beyond that, with proper training, build quality won't be an issue at all.
However, my problem with North American built cars and cars built specifically for North America is the material quality. Take Toyota for example, Corolla/Corolla Cross/RAV4 has significantly worse materials here in NA compared to Europe. They do this because it's not a huge deal for customers here.
Japan-built Mazdas in my opinion have a better material quality simply because the cost savings don't really outweigh the cost to introduce lower-quality materials. I have yet to sit in a CX-50, but from the pics it seems like rear door trims are hard plastic.
The material quality was one of the main reasons why I choose the CX-5. I really hope they kept the material quality on the same level, but I doubt it.

 

[ceric]

Ironically (echoing what 7eregrine said), my last car problem due to assembly issue was on my '08 Mazda CX9. A piece of foam inside passenger door fell off blocking glass from rolling down.
Yes, that car was made in Japan.

All other problems (including my problematic BMW) have been part failure.

 

[181962]

Gobsmacked that some people STILL think American workers are somehow inferior to their Japanese counterparts. I know much of this has to do with the late 80's early 90's but those crappy throwaway American cars were designed to be disposable... they weren't built that way because Americans don't build good cars.

The question here is not American workers per se. It's rookie American workers, working in a new plant, on a new model.

 

[7eregrine]

Still... it's not like they are assembling these things with hand tools.

 

[meow_man]

Still... it's not like they are assembling these things with hand tools.

Speaking of hand tools. My first new car, a 1974 Chevy Vega always had a lump under the carpet in the rear driver's side passenger floor. Several years into the ownership I pulled up the carpet while running some wires and found a pair of pliers stuck to the floor under the carpet.

 

[181962]

Still... it's not like they are assembling these things with hand tools.

Partly. Those 4.000 folks are doing something besides monitoring robots. Come to think of it, the robots are only as good as the people calibrating, monitoring, adjusting them.

 

[181962]

Speaking of hand tools. My first new car, a 1974 Chevy Vega always had a lump under the carpet in the rear driver's side passenger floor. Several years into the ownership I pulled up the carpet while running some wires and found a pair of pliers stuck to the floor under the carpet.

'74 Vega? Ouch!

 

[GTEyes]

…I have yet to sit in a CX-50, but from the pics it seems like rear door trims are hard plastic.

That appears to be true. One of the reviews I had watched highlighted this. In the top trim model they were reviewing, Mazda uses harder, cheaper plastics on the rear door cards.

 

[ceric]

That appears to be true. One of the reviews I had watched highlighted this. In the top trim model they were reviewing, Mazda uses harder, cheaper plastics on the rear door cards.

Redline Reviews: mentioned at 16:38

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