Industry History | Mazda — The Cork Works That Became a Plant in Fuchu
· 1920-1
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Industry History | Mazda — The Cork Works That Became a Plant in Fuchu
kevin
People treat Mazda as a Hiroshima carmaker that arrived already named after a rotary engine.
The papers that started the firm were for cork.
In January 1920, local backers in Hiroshima formed Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd. to rescue a failing cork works. The first rooms were in Nakajima-shinmachi. By June the office and factory had moved to Yoshijima, still inside the city.
Jujiro Matsuda became the second president in March 1921. Compressed cork board kept the books alive until a fire in December 1925 destroyed about 70 percent of the plant.
Matsuda had come up as a machinist. In September 1927 the company dropped cork from its name and became Toyo Kogyo Co., Ltd.
In 1931 it built a new works on reclaimed foreshore at Fuchu village, now Fuchu-cho, and moved the headquarters there from Hiroshima city. The first vehicle was a three-wheeled truck sold as the Mazda-go.
The headquarters is still at 3-1 Shinchi, Fuchu-cho, Aki-gun. The Mazda Museum sits on the same lot and is open to booked visitors.
On 6 August 1945 the atomic bomb wrecked the city centre. Damage at the Fuchu plant was limited. Toyo Kogyo put space at the disposal of prefectural offices and helped with relief while it restarted production.
The company took the Mazda name in full in 1984. It remains a Nikkei 225 constituent whose legal address has not left this stretch of the coast since 1931.
The rotary engine, the later listings, and the Mexico and Alabama plants are later chapters. The founding fact is a cork company that chose a machine shop, then a truck, then this address.
Photo: Taisyo, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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