Mazda to Kia: Don’t target us!

Mazda has counselled would-be usurper Kia not to target its number two position in the Australian new-vehicle sales market.

Instead, Mazda Australia managing director Vinesh Bhindi says Kia should focus on a sound strategy to sell its vehicles and make its position on the sales ladder an outcome of that.

“From our point of view we have never made ranking an objective,” said Bhindi. “Rankings is only an outcome of the strategy.”

In a recent interview with carsales, Kia Australia CEO Damien Meredith said that 100,000-plus sales per annum and taking over number two in the Aussie car market would be logical outcome of a huge influx of new models in coming years.

That product influx includes the 2025 Kia Tasman ute, electric PBV commercial vans and the EV5, EV4 and EV3 battery-electric cars that will take Kia into a more affordable space in the EV market.

Kia is forecasting the ute, which arrives by mid-2025, will be worth 25,000 sales per annum. In 2023, Kia sold 76,120 vehicles to be fourth in the market.

But Bhindi was unmoved by the Kia influx.

“Just because you have got a car doesn’t mean you have got customers,” he said.

Mazda, which has sold more than 100,000 vehicles in nine of the last 12 years and placed second to dominant market leader Toyota for the last nine years in a row, is seen as potentially facing a sales challenge in coming years.

It has retired its two large SUVs, the CX-8 and CX-9, and replaced them with more expensive models including the CX-70 unveiled this week.

Meanwhile its sales staple, the CX-5 mid-size SUV, is aged and not due for replacement until at least 2025.

Mazda has also raised the prices of its entry-level models such as the Mazda2, Mazda3 and CX-3 as part of its Mazda Premium strategy.

But Bhindi insisted there was no sales slump in sight for Mazda. The intention is to continue to sell around 100,000 new vehicles per annum in Australia.

“Our strategy is we have a business we think we can get about 100,000 [sales],” he said. “Since 2012 to now we’ve done that on average… but that doesn’t mean every year we have been saying ‘number two, number two, number two’. It’s just an outcome.

“But if another brand says they are going to make a position their objective than that’s what they will do.

“I hope it’s always an outcome because I think if you look at the industry in the past there have been people who made it an objective and there was cybercars and all those things that came about and I am hoping the industry has moved on from those sorts of practices.”

Cybercars are vehicles reported as sold to buyers that never actually left the dealer lots. The tactic was actively used to rort the official sales numbers issued by VFACTS so brands could claim sales leadership.

The publisher of VFACTS, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), moved several years ago to clean up the practice so more accurate sales numbers would be published.

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