For many years, Mazda tried to break into the lucrative executive saloon market. But just like they stuck to the Wankel engine until they ironed out nearly all the issues and won Le Mans with it, Mazda kept knocking on the door of the luxury car market until they cracked it with the Millenia. Having achieved their goal and shown Lexus, Mercedes and Jaguar how we do things in Hiroshima, they then retreated back to mid-size cars. That’s what happened, right?
Not exactly. Sometimes, as with the Roadpacer, the results were utter failure. Other times, as with the Luce, they merely fell a bit short of expectations. After twenty-odd years of near-misses and total duds, Mazda went all out and fielded not one, but two big cars under their new multi-marque strategy. One was the RWD ɛ̃fini MS-9, a.k.a Mazda Sentia / 929; the other was the Eunos 800, known to the rest of world as the Mazda Millenia. Or the Xedos 9. Why do things simply when they can be needlessly complicated?
The Eunos 800 was launched in 1993 in Japan with a choice of a 200hp 2.5 litre V6 or a 220hp 2.3 litre Miller Cycle V6 – the latter being a world first for a car engine. European markets also had a 2-litre V6 available in their Mazda Xedos 9. That smaller engine was not available in the Mazda Millenia as marketed for MY 1995 in North America with slightly detuned V6s.
Mazda euthanized the Eunos marque in 1997, so the JDM car was rebadged as the Mazda Millenia. In 1998, a mild facelift was made and the 160hp 2-litre engine made its way to the Japanese range, enabling the base model Millenia to be sold for under ¥2.5m – a bargain that, alas, did not contribute much to the Millenia’s long-term viability.
I’m not sure what engine this car has, but this looks like a base model – higher-trim Millennias had a little more pizzazz than this. Don’t get me wrong, this looks very typical of a larger late ‘90s Japanese car, but competition from the likes of Toyota, Nissan or Honda in this segment was fierce. Miller Cycle aside, Mazda just didn’t have anything very exclusive to propose.
But this was not the only large saloon Mazda fielded on the JDM in the late ‘90s: the second-generation RWD Sentia (1995-99) was a little larger, especially in rear passenger space, and sported a 3-litre V6. Although it did not really compete with the Eunos 800 / Mazda Millenia, the Sentia did overshadow it by its very existence. But that turned out to be shorter than Mazda expected, and the Sentia was pensioned off to Korea, the graveyard of Japanese carmakers’ delusions of automotive grandeur.
For its part, the Millenia got a final (and rather unfortunate) facelift in 2000, but lost both the 2-litre and the Miller Cycle V6 soon after. Production carried on until August 2003, by which time 230,000 units had been made. That works out to an average of 23,000 per year, which is probably why Mazda didn’t bother with a replacement.
It takes guts to try and conquer a place in the sun at the top of the heap, but it takes brains to know when to throw in the towel. The Millenia was, by all accounts, a very good car. Well built, pleasantly styled, competitively priced. Alas, even on its home market, a Mazda badge just wasn’t convincing to enough people in this segment. Competency doesn’t make a flagship float, but snobbery can sink it.
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: 2000 Mazda Millenia S – Identity Crisis, by Tom Klockau
COAL: 1996 Mazda Millenia – Repo Special, by James Pastor
Automotive Histories: Mazda’s Amati Division – Is It Better To Have Loved And Lost, Or To Never Have Loved At All?, by William Stopford
This was intended to be an Amati, Mazda’s stillborn division meant to challenge Acura and Lexus. Note how “Amati” is MIATA mixed around 🙂
In recent years Mazda has again tried to move upmarket, although this time without launching any new brands. As far as I can tell, the effort hasn’t been all that successful. If my locale is at all typical, Mazda suffers from a weak dealer base – many areas are far from a dealership. The closest one to me is a sideline to an old Ford dealer, with a showroom that looks more like a 1970s office than a modern car dealership.
I recall the Millenia as being quite nice and subtly elegant, but ultimately not all that different or superior to a Lexus ES300 (probably its closest competitor) or other alternatives. The ergonomics were better than the Lexus (except perhaps for the odd climate controls tilted toward the passenger, though it was still easy for the driver to use). The Miller-cycle engine was its point of distinction, but I’m probably like most potential customers in not really understanding what a Miller-cycle engine is or why it’s better than the alternatives, so I’m not surprised it failed to sell in big numbers.
la673: I work at a store that sells Mazda. Yes, they are attempting to move up-market and it seems (in my view just from this dealership) that they are only succeeding with the current Mazda owners or with a small number of people who have drank the Kool-Aid from the car magazine and/or Mazda’s advertising where they try hard to make Mazda into what it isn’t. I do believe the Mazda’s are nicer than the Toyota’s for most exteriors and for sure the interiors. Maybe a little nicer than the Honda and Fords. However, they are not as good as the comparable GM products. But I’m just referring to the styling and interiors. What isn’t good is how many of them just don’t hold up well and many issues with them. I’m seeing way too many engines being replaced on newer cars.
But I’ve always liked these old Mazda “luxury” cars. Years ago a couple I knew drove Buicks for many years. Then one gave them some transmission issues and they switched to a Mazda Millenia. They liked it very much for the first couple years, then it started with many issues that just didn’t seem to stop. After her husband died, she ended up with a Honda Accord that I sold her.
Have you visited one of the new stores? New spec is very upscale.
Also 2021 was Mazda’s best year sales-wise since 1994, 330k sold in 2021 vs. 280k in 2020. Their crossover lineup is top of the industry in reliability, customer satisfaction, and road test scores. They must be doing something right…
The Amati range looked to have a really compelling engine lineup, with the prospect of the Millenia’s Miller V6, the Eunos Cosmo’s twin sequential turbo 20B-REW triple rotor Wankel, and the 1000’s small-displacement V12 with some pretty exotic materials (ceramic pistons, lots of magnesium castings). Plus, Mazda had plenty of sewing machine-smooth small displacement V6s peppered throughout its own brand lineup at the time. It was just a bit if an over reach by a too-small company on shaky financial grounds which coincided with the infamous Japanese bubble economy bust. Any interview anyone can find with Bob Hall, who shepherded the MX5 to production and ended up leaving Mazda due to the cancellation of the Amati plans, then went to Acura for its really comercially successful late 90s to mid 00s period, is fascinating. Really interesting player in a neat time in the auto industry.
The Millenia was perhaps a good auxiliary poduct to support the real showstoppers in that prospective range, but wasn’t much of a flagship on its own, having taken over reduced ambitions from the 929. But the near-luxury sedan market was at its zenith in the mid 90s, with the Millenia, Diamante, Lexus and Acura hitting their strides, Lincoln and Olds and Buick issuing some neat stuff, Chrysler riding the LH wave, and Saab and Volvo seeing some mainstream success.
Wow your reply really made me stop and think about how many of those I have owned! 1st gen 929 (loved it), Diamante (loved it), Concorde, SSE Bonnie, Legend, RL, and Lexuses of every type.
The smaller K-series V-6s, sadly, didn’t make a lot of sense outside Japan or maybe Italy. The 1.8-liter K8 was a neat engine and very sweet, but it gave four-cylinder power with six-cylinder fuel consumption, and I assume the 2-liter KF-ZE was in the same boat. Even the 2.5-liter V-6 didn’t have a great abundance of torque, and I got the impression they were oil-burners with a bit of mileage. (I used to see a lot of cars with that engine leaving in a trail of blue smoke.) A lovely idea, but in practice, a DOHC four with balance shafts made more sense in many cases, which is the epitaph for a lot of interesting engineering.
I remember the complaint about the Eunos 30X with the K8 here in Australia was that it was torqueless and illmatched for an automatic, not characteristics you expected from a six.
Six or no, it was 1,845 cc and had only 16 kg-m of torque (around 115 lb-ft) at 5,500 rpm, so the complaint was pretty justified.
Poor Infiniti doesn’t even get an honorable mention in this whole thread. Just saying.
Infiniti had the G20, which was a very nice D-segment family sedan that felt out of its weight class against six-cylinder near-luxury rivals, and the J30, which was … well, whatever THAT was. Decent chassis, a bit heavy for best straight-line performance, styling that looked like a bigger version of one of those Mitsuoka oddballs Tatra87 has written about before.
The G20 was a fantastic vehicle on its own, but didn’t fit in at all in the NA market of the 90s. I owned one, and it truly was peak Nissan. The J30 was a Hirschberg fever dream brought to life, and was just too odd, and anyway, it failed out of existence just as the market segment hit its stride in 1997. The I30 was more commercially successful and more like the other competitors, but since it was basically a Maxima GLE with a higher price and worse suspension tune, I wouldn’t really consider it different enough to really make a good showing. Sure, the Continental was a Taurus, the ES was a Camry, and the Acuras were Accord and Civic based, but none of those were such blatant rebadges, with different body styles and/or different engine options than their downmarket bases. Heck, the Avalon’s upper trims offered the same quasi-luxury features, a similar driving experience and yet more differentiation from the Camry.
Ah yes, we received all ours badged as the Eunos 800, the 500’s chunkier less-attractive sibling… Can look presentable enough when wearing a nicely-coloured ensemble but lived in the shadow of the very pretty 500. Still one left on the roads locally,
“…Korea, the graveyard of Japanese carmakers’ delusions of automotive grandeur…”, absolutely magnificent Mitsubishi allusion there!