Andrew Clearwater (above) has often talked about a target that would make his time as managing director of Mazda New Zealand particularly special: sales of 10,000 new vehicles in a calendar year.
“That would make me very happy indeed, something to look back on with immense pride after I had retired,” he has said.
The 10,000 goal mightn’t be too far away – because Mazda has just cracked 1000 sales in a month for the first time ever and needs around 1400 registrations before December 31 to make Clearwater’s dream come true. That’s another 51 sleeps from today, November 11. No pressure!
Clearwater, in his early 60s and at the helm of Mazda NZ for the past nine years, says the sales success is the result of having a “fantastic’ line-up of vehicles and a great team and dealer network.
“The introduction of the sixth-generation Mazda vehicles has provided the impetus for our continued growth over recent months,” he said.
“All models are performing strongly in their respective segments and we are looking forward to a very strong finish to the year.”
At the end of October Mazda had sold 8546 new cars and commercials for a year-to-date market share of 8.4 per cent. Its share for all of 2014 was 6 per cent and 8128 sales.
The Japanese company’s line-up of cars and SUVs are the stars of the show, with sales after 10 months of 2015 at 7375 units – 707 up on all of last year’s 6668 and an average increase of 70 cars a month.
Commercial sales at October were at 1171 units, against the 1460 sold in 12 months last year. There’s not much in the numbers – commercials averaged 121 units a month in 2014; this year they are at 117 a month and expected to be boosted somewhat by the facelifted BT-50 ute.
The CX-5 and Mazda3 are the fourth and fifth most popular passenger cars on the NZ Motor Industry Association’s sales chart, after the Toyota Corolla, Toyota RAV4, and Holden Commodore, and ahead of the Toyota Yaris, Hyundai ix35, and Holden Captiva.
The performance of Mazda NZ reflects the performance of Mazda worldwide, says Clearweater. The carmaker’s recent half-yearly results showed global sales of about 764,000 units, up around 95,000 on the same period last year. Operating profit was 125.9 billion yen, or $NZ1.5 billion.