The formula may be the same for each country, but the data you put in them is different - fuel prices, salaries, taxes, import costs, road quality and characteristics, the average distance people travel to work, parking availability, the average person’s height and weight, weather conditions… Israelis mashed those numbers together and got a Mazda. Other countries might put in different data, and get different results.
The top selling cars in Israel just looks like a typical European car assemblage* except for having lots of Mazdas and very few VW’s. It looks to me like Mazda is filling the fun-to-drive economy car niche that VW occupies in most other countries. Even if the current generation of Israeli car buyers aren’t holding a grudge, I could see how VW could have had problems making inroads into Israel in the past.
(*See here for all sorts of world best-selling car lists: http://bestsellingcarsblog.com/)
Historical issues aside, Israelis seem to have a huge amount of respect for German auto engineering - the luxury market here is completely dominated by Mercedes, BMW and Audi. I don’t know about VW these days, but Beetles used to be ubiquitous until the nineties.
There are only 7 million people in Israel, and the level of car ownership is probably lower than the 5 cars per household or whatever it is in the US. Bringing a car to market has many fixed costs, you have to establish a dealership network, supply parts, train technicians, all that jazz. The other car makers probably don’t see a whole lot of profit in it and Mazda just happens to be the one that’s the least disinterested. Alessan’s explanation is probably accurate - if one organization/body ends up being the largest wholesaler/buyer of cars, they probably won’t bother trying to spread themselves across a bunch of brands from different countries.
The car market in most countries (other than oddball places like Britain or New Zealand) have very high barriers to entry and strongly favour incumbents. Once one company gets a foothold and set themselves up as a “default” choice it takes decades for competitors to make an inroads.
As to the side topic and without going into a lot of boring details, I bought a used 2006 Mazda 5 Sport a couple of years ago.
I bought it for a few of reasons: it was cheap, low mileage and it had a stick.
It is not hip. It is not pretty. The only thing it has going for it is, it drives. And I don’t mean getting from point A to point B efficiently. It gets you there quickly when you want it to and it is a heck of a lot of fun to drive. The steering is tight and the torque is great.
Of, course it is some kind of dorky-looking sub-mini-van. I have no idea how Mazda came up with this concept, but I think auto-tweakers may be missing out on something when they buy a Scion.
Plus, you have plenty of room to haul around a couple of big dogs and seat six contortionists.
Being an old guy, the only thing I don’t like about it is the expense of replacing the low-profile tires.
[QUOTE=Alessan;14869652 Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that the Israeli new car market is dominated by the big auto leasing firms, who regularly snap up something like half of all cars imported to the country. I wouldn’t be surprised if some bean-counters circa 2003 reached the conclusion that the Mazda 3 was the best car to invest in, in terms of price, fuel economy, reliability and resale value, and when one company started buying them, all of the others followed suit.[/QUOTE]
Yep this to me sounds like the right idea. In Australia we have been dominated by two large passenger cars made here due to the large fleet buyers, the fleet buyers now offer more choice to employees and are watching their dollar and cents and as such are now offering Mazda 3 etc in the line up.
From what I understand Mazda offer some pretty good fleet incentives in Aus as well…
Another Mazda 5 owner here, and they are great little family vehicles, but Mazda didn’t come up with the idea of a small mini-van, they are just the only ones willing to sell them here. Vehicles of the same basic configuration are quite popular in Europe - see the Ford Grand C-Max, or the Opel Zafira, for two similar sized cars that Ford or General Motors could easily bring to the US if they wanted too. Many other Compact MPVs are available in other countries.
For that matter, the Mazda 5 is about the same size as the original Dodge Caravan; the Mazda 5 is 5.6" longer, 0.4" narrower, and 0.2" shorter than the 1984 Caravan. Which goes to show how much vehicles have bloated up in size over the last 30 years.
So it sounds like fleet sales may have a hand in the abundance of Mazdas on the road here.
I can see that, given that 7 out of 7 employees here renting cars all got Mazda. If my understanding is correct, then more people here lease their car? If so. I can see the relationship.
So small market leads to one company fairly dominating the space as a smaller slices of a divided market space aren’t worth fighting for. Makes sense.
Are Mazdas also particularly reliable and long lasting? Given the high tax on auto purchase in Israel I would think that durability would also be a critical part of the decision process.
To be honest [puts on flame suit] most cars are pretty reliable these days with the exception of some US and Chinese cars. This is spoken as a Dodge Nitro driver.
I drove a Miata from 1994-2006 which, aside from the usual oil/brakes/tires stuff, only required one significant repair (replaced radiator due to damage). In 2006 I upgraded to one of the new retractable hardtop Miatas, which has had no downtime and which I expect to provide me several more years of daily-driver enjoyment. It still drives like new.
For comparison, I bought a Ford Expedition in 2000 which has had significant brake and rotor repairs, mechanical issues with doors and sunroof, a window leak (due to a design defect) which caused all sorts of mysterious electrical problems, etc.
I would say Mazda is the clear winner in my experience.