Cars and Driving

Hiroshima is a company town. Mazda is the region’s biggest employer, and the carmaker bankrolls the city’s professional baseball team, the Hiroshima Carp. The company was instrumental in rebuilding Hiroshima after the atomic bombing in 1945. Only days after the blast leveled the city’s industrial base, the Mazda assembly line was back up and running. Space was cleared in the company headquarters for the Hiroshima prefectural government. Japan tends to be parochial when it comes to its automobiles, and it will not take long in Hiroshima to know you are in Mazda country. Compared to most Japanese cities, Hiroshima is absolutely garish with its signs of its deep red baseball team everywhere you look, including red taxis and red cars, all of which it should be noted are brought to you by Mazda. Car companies have historically taken the name of their founder – Louis Chevrolet, Ferdinand Porsche, Soichiro Honda, Charles Rolls, and Henry Royce. Originally Mazda was no different and was known as Matsuda after its founder Jujiro Matsuda. Mazda, however, changed its name, adapting the spelling to that of the Persian god of light, intelligence, and wisdom, Ahura Mazda. That is because the business began life as a…