As my wife owns a Mazda 3 Sport, she gets the very well produced Mazda magazine that featured the centenary of the company this year.
Mazda (originally Toyo Kogyo Corp.) did other industrial things including being part of the war effort in WW2, and had their factory in Hiroshima. The president of the company, Jujiro Matsuda, got a hair cut at 7:30 on August 6, 1945, and headed for work, and Enola Gay dropped the bomb known as Little Boy on a spot about 50 yards from the barber shop and say goodbye to most of the city. It threw Matsuda and his driver out of the car and flipped the car, but they lived. The factory was on the other side of a mountain, so also survived.
The first car produced was in 1960, the R360 coupe, with a 16 bhp V twin engine and a top speed of 52 mph. Competitors included the first post-war NSU Prinz with a 600 cc twin.
Zoom-zoom, Mazda (i.e. happy anniversary).
