CX-50 North American Assembly - Quality?

With the CX-50 being manufactured in Alabama, does anyone have concerns about the build quality of this new model compared to the Japanese assembled vehicles?
 
This will be in a joint Toyota Mazda plant. Should be fine like most Japanese manufacturers as Toyota has been assembling vehicles in North America for decades, same with Honda and Subaru. Can't say the same for Nissan as I had very bad luck with my previous vehicle, a 2017.5 Nissan Murano assembled in the U.S. with loose and missing parts, misaligned moldings, always in the shop for defective O2 sensors, etc. etc. My 2014 Murano assembled in Japan had zero problems! Now you know why I have a Mazda and not another Nissan!
 
I do worry a little bit. My CRV was made, and I could not believe this at first, in the UK. And it was not very reliable. Our Toyota Sienna was made in the USA as was our Honda Odyssey. Both unreliable. Nothing major but tons of little things such as the sliding door failing, the cruise control camera cracking and requiring replacement, A/C issues, etc. A lot of these things costed $1000-$2500 to fix and drove me nuts. None of those cars got over 120K miles either.

My Mazda's up to this point (2.5T oil burning issues) have been very, very reliable. My first Mazda was a 2014 CX-5 and we traded it in for a 2021 CX-5 GTR after 150K miles and that car was just fantastic. Not a single issue and the only cost was tires and brakes.

Would love to see any data comparing reliability of models from different geographic locations.
 
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My CX-5 was built in Hiroshima and my wife's 3 was built in Mexico. Her car is built better with fewer rattles, less NVH and smaller gaps. It was also manufactured about 14 months later.

It does not matter where a car is built. What matters is the process.
 
I would worry about new factory with new poorly trained workers.
I would be less concerned about whether it is built in US or Japan (or Mexico).

Back when Nissan initially built Amada in US, new factory w/ new workers.
Lots of assembly issues...
 
Personally, I think I would wait a couple of years. Not because of where it is made, but because it's a new plant. There's no reason to expect that workers at the new plant would be poorly trained, but I'm sure a majority of them will be new hires, with Mazda and Toyota bringing in veteran employees to manage and train them up as they go.

With that said, I think that where a vehicle is made does generally have some bearing on how well it is put together. I base this on my own experience, as well as differences in culture.
 
IMO, they invested quite a bit in this plant and the additional 830 million, committed in 2020, were for "cutting edge" technologies and better training. As long as they are paying a close attention to they're QA/QC processes I think it will be ok. and tbh I expect that for the top 2 manufacturers known for they're vehicle reliability (at least couple years now) in the auto industry.
 
IMO, they invested quite a bit in this plant and the additional 830 million, committed in 2020, were for "cutting edge" technologies and better training. As long as they are paying a close attention to they're QA/QC processes I think it will be ok. and tbh I expect that for the top 2 manufacturers known for they're vehicle reliability (at least couple years now) in the auto industry.

Very true. It's a good sign that the plant is shared with Toyota, which has been the auto industry's benchmark of reliability and build quality (Lexus) for many years. I'd be a lot more concerned if the plant was shared with Nissan or Lincoln, for example.
 
I think they just share the plant. The employees are not interchangeable. In other words, Toyota employees and Mazda employees are not shared and could both be great or one could be crap without impact to the other. Time will tell.

Are they making the CX-5 there also?
 
I'd be less concerned about the mere fact the plant is in Alabama. I'd be more concerned that it is a new plant, new work force and new model. Personally, I would not buy the first year of a new model or generation from anybody with the possible exception of Lexus. The new plant and work force compounds the concerns. I'm sure this deters no one wanting a new new thing.
Are they making the CX-5 there also?

No. CX-5's sold in North American are built in Japan until further notice.
 
Very true. It's a good sign that the plant is shared with Toyota, which has been the auto industry's benchmark of reliability and build quality (Lexus) for many years. I'd be a lot more concerned if the plant was shared with Nissan or Lincoln, for example.
I doubt it would make much difference if they were sharing the plant with Yugo or Lexus. There's no shared design or manufacturing in the two vehicles, different management and processes.

The sharing appears to be for economies of scale, and a novel flexible assembly floor or so I've read. As for the latter, if one model is selling more than the other that flexible floor might make it easier to shift production from one to the other.
 
I doubt it would make much difference if they were sharing the plant with Yugo or Lexus. There's no shared design or manufacturing in the two vehicles, different management and processes.

The sharing appears to be for economies of scale, and a novel flexible assembly floor or so I've read. As for the latter, if one model is selling more than the other that flexible floor might make it easier to shift production from one to the other.
I find that difficult to believe. Toyota has a financial stake in Mazda. The structure and layout of the buildings alone have implications for assembly, materials management, quality control, and so forth.

I think they are sharing more than an address.
 
I find that difficult to believe. Toyota has a financial stake in Mazda. The structure and layout of the buildings alone have implications for assembly, materials management, quality control, and so forth.

I think they are sharing more than an address.
The CX-50 is built on the same platform as the CX-30. The CX-50 drive trains are Mazda's. A Mazda North America representative stated explicitly parts will not be shared between CX-50 and Corolla Cross.

Toyota took a 5% stake in Mazda while Mazda took a 0.25% stake in Toyota back in 2017 in conjunction with the Alabama project. Toyota also has a 20% stake in Subaru and 5% in Suzuki and those two smaller automakers have a small percentage ownership in Toyota. You can read the possible significance of these capital maneuvers in the following link which should be noted is 4 1/2 years old.


It should be expected that some joint design work is in progress that will show up in vehicles down the road but it has been 4 1/2 years and evidently nothing so far that shows up in the CX-50. The fact that Toyota put too many eggs in the hydrogen fuel cell basket, late to the EV game, and has been marshalling allies among other late comers, is probably telling as observed in that link. Sharing? Yes. Right now? Evidently not in the CX-50/Corolla Cross.
 
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Here's an article about the flexible assembly system I alluded to earlier. It is a Mazda design which might be one reason why the plant is named Mazda Toyota Alabama, not the other way around, as well as the extent of the "sharing" currently taking place--an assembly system, not auto design or shared parts currently manifest. Not very elegantly written, but you get the gist:

 
Here's an article about the flexible assembly system I alluded to earlier. It is a Mazda design which might be one reason why the plant is named Mazda Toyota Alabama, not the other way around, as well as the extent of the "sharing" currently taking place--an assembly system, not auto design or shared parts currently manifest. Not very elegantly written, but you get the gist:

Thanks for the link, its exactly the sort of thing I had in mind in my post. Particularly manufacturing and processes:
"...The first factory to adopt the new production technologies was Hofu, but all Mazda facilities are supposed to do the same. When it comes to the new Mazda Toyota Manufacturing in Huntsville, Alabama, using the system would imply sharing the benefits with Toyota..."
 
I would think that they would be sharing basic operation guidelines and processes at minimum. Things like QA procedures and standards, software testing processes, etc. Things that could streamline and optimize production on both lines.
 
I would think that they would be sharing basic operation guidelines and processes at minimum. Things like QA procedures and standards, software testing processes, etc. Things that could streamline and optimize production on both lines.
QA procedures and software testing processes are the kinds of things that are model or shared component specific. As far as I can tell the workers are not shared / cross trained. So it would seem that kind of stuff comes later when they actually share stuff beyond the assembly floor design and processes.
 
I'm thinking things like how parts and materials get into the building and to the correct station, at the correct time and quantity, to be installed

Material flow, work in progress, non-conforming material disposition, cleaning and sanitation - dumb stuff that isn't sexy, but is important.
 
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.

It's taken time but Japanese makers have successfully imported kaisan (continuous improvement) principles. However, the cautionary tale is many of those improvements regardless of where the vehicle is made come in the second, third, fourth year of a new model or generation as real world miles pile up.
 
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Our Toyota Sienna was made in the USA as was our Honda Odyssey. Both unreliable. Nothing major but tons of little things such as the sliding door failing, the cruise control camera cracking and requiring replacement, A/C issues, etc. A lot of these things costed $1000-$2500 to fix and drove me nuts. None of those cars got over 120K miles either.
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.
 
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