Unwinding thirty-six years with Ford, and the turn to independence (2015)

Breaking free of subordination, and the question that follows independence

If the 1996 seizure of control was the turning point at which a company cornered by redemptions and a strong yen chose subordination most deeply, the 2015 unwinding was the break from that subordination. Yet the initiative in breaking away lay with Ford; it was not that Mazda actively cut the ties. What Mazda could do was, over the years as its backer thinned out, to prepare in advance — through a public share offering and proprietary technology — the “stamina to stay standing even if abandoned.” Accept control and live on, or keep autonomy and stand on its own — to the question over which subscale Mazda long wavered, this time it can be seen as answering from the side of autonomy.

Still, regaining independence did not, by itself, mean surviving alone. A small maker can hardly bankroll the huge investment in electrification and connectivity on its own, and two years after parting from Ford, Mazda formed an equal tie-up with Toyota to make up its shortfall of scale. Where the earlier tie-up had been a relationship of control and subordination, the new one takes an equal form with cross-holdings kept small. How Mazda — having regained the discretion it lost under Ford — will reconcile autonomy with alliance is a question that, amid the heavy investment in electrification still under way, remains unsettled even now.