(Photo: AGuyInVancouver)
A quick glance at this rather anonymous early-1990s Mazda sedan may have you thinking 626, but a keener look will make you want to flip your sixes around – this car is a 929 (more specifically, a 929 Serenia, the suffix attached to Canadian models). Sold as the Sentia in Japan, the 929 was Mazda’s flagship sedan in North America from 1988 through 1995. While both the 929 and 1993 626 shared the same design language, the 929’s larger proportions made for a far more elegant expression of style.
Arriving for the 1992 model year in North America, this final generation 929 shed the generic boxy look of its predecessor for flowing lines and sculpted bodywork. More athletic proportions were achieved by a longer wheelbase, wider body, and lower roofline. According to my brochure, the 929 was designed using Kansei Engineering, “a philosophy based upon human perceptions, feelings, and emotions”.
With rear-wheel drive, V6 power, and luxury appointments sans luxury name, the 929 was really the odd man out. By that point, all other Japanese luxury cars were being sold under newly created luxury brands. At the time, Mazda was planning its own luxury brand, Amati, to compete with Acura, Infiniti, and Lexus. While it’s unclear whether the 929 was meant to preview a future Amati flagship or become part of Amati itself, it’s apparent that this 929 was a reflection of Mazda’s upmarket ambitions. Amati, however, never came to be, and the 929 continued its relatively short life as a regular Mazda.
Among the 929’s most notable features was the optional Solar Powered Ventilation System. Powered by a moonroof integrated solar panel, when outside temperatures reached over 59°F, two auxiliary ventilation fans near the trunk would automatically engage, pulling hot air out of the parked car, and bringing fresh air in to maintain internal temperature. In theory, it’s a really genius idea. No one likes getting into a 100+ degree car that’s been parked in the sun all day. It’s surprising that a similar feature is not more common on luxury cars today.
These cars could be loaded up rather nicely, with features such as leather upholstery, genuine wood trim, automatic climate control, and a 12-speaker audio system with 6-disc CD changer. North American Mazda 929s were powered by a 24-valve 3.0L V6 making 193 horsepower and 200 lb.-ft. of torque. With close dimensions, power, and levels of luxury, the 929 was most similar to cars like the Acura Legend, Infiniti J30, and Lexus GS. Whether or not prospective buyers of these cars took notice of the 929 is another story.
It is likely they didn’t, as I don’t ever remember seeing a whole lot of 929s out on the road, even many years ago. Mazda withdrew the 929 from the Canadian market in 1994, and the U.S. in 1995. It would be replaced by the slightly smaller, front-wheel drive Millenia, a car that shared the 929’s identity crisis.
A good-looking car, however, the mechanics would be worrisome.
I think this is really what the 01 Sable I’m driving should have looked like. The body lines are similar if you squint.
You could say these are Mazda’s Fuselage, though they never relied on 929 sales in the same way, and the concurrent 626 sold well enough to not be a failure.
Still Mazda embraced the “organic” look more wholeheartedly than anyone after years of near-Nissan boxiness.
I don’t believe the 929 was meant to be folded into Amati. There were 626-derived cars which were meant to slot below the Millenia, but I don’t know how Mazda would’ve ideally come up with a range topper, unless that’s what the Millenia was meant for.
These were RWD cars while the concurrent 626 was FWD. Design language, that they had oscillating center vents, and that the Model badge started looking melted or that it was rotting pretty early in its life while the Mazda badge on the other side of the trunk kept looking good are the only things shared between the two models.
Did I say the two shared engineering?
Sorry I misread I though you said these were 626 derived cars.
This 929 wasn’t specifically intended to be an Amati, but its platform was designed to be stretched further to accommodate a V12 for the top-end Amati 1000 (or 1200). It was to be the basis for one or more RWD Amatis.
A V12 Mazda? (Or, should I say, Amati…) Now that would have been something. Zoom zoom, indeed.
Yes, it was based on the Mazda K-series V6. I believe the V12 was based on the 2.0L variant of the V6 (not sold in the U.S.) and hence was a 4.0L V12. Power was to be in the 320-340 hp range. A prototype is supposedly still on display at the Mazda museum in Hiroshima.
Amati was so close to launch in the US that they had leased office space and had a bunch of employees.
Yep, somewhere out there, there were “dealer packages” put together that were made as presentations to current Mazda dealers, I think they had a range of potential models and some dealership designs too. I imagine that you could probably find one on ebay.
Here’s one, but its kinda small….
Wow, I never knew they came that close.
I wonder if that V12 engine is related to the one finally ending up at Aston Martin, and powering their cars even today?
Ingvar: Nope, the Aston Martin engine is based on the Ford Duratec V-6 from the Mondeo, which wasn’t related to the Mazda K-series. (The most obvious tip-off is that the bore and stroke relationships are different, making the Ford engines a bit bigger in displacement — the Duratec 2.0 is actually 2,099cc, the 2.5 is 2,544cc.) I think the Duratec was a little heavier and to most tastes, less sweet.
Before Mazda decided to move ahead with the K-based V12, they also had a W-12 (three banks of four cylinders each) with magnesium heads and an aluminum block on the drawing board:
Where’d you find that brochure? I remember it from when I visited a Mazda dealer with my dad in 1992.
I own a copy I bought on eBay last year. I actually took a picture of the page with my phone, as it’s too large to fit in my scanner without getting bent. I’ve been buying brochures on eBay exclusively from productioncars for several years now. He’s a very reliable and reasonably affordable seller. Combines shipping if you purchase multiple brochures.
I got I to enjoy a 93 model 929 for a week to write a magazine article. It was a very impressive luxury sedan and a multi-disc CD changer was a welcome feature when I had to drive from Edmonton, Alberta to Prince George, BC. That’s about 700 km one way and the 929 did it with ease.
You’re right Brendan not a lot of these were sold and I’ve seen perhaps a couple in the Edmonton area that have well cared for to survive all the winters since the early 90’s.
It’s styling looks somewhat generic by today’s standards. But at the time, these were one of the cleanest new car designs available. I just wish they were more prolific.
I have only seen 929s in pictures, never in the flesh. It seems once a year I’ll see a clapped out 626 in traffic.
The weird thing is I’m seeing more Millenias being driven by teenagers as first cars. They never sold all that well and I’ve heard the transmissions were fragile. What woodwork are these cars coming out of? FWIW the nearest Mazda dealers are 100 miles from where I live.
A young friend owned a Millenia for 3-4 months earlier this year. It was an unhappy experience for him. WHile investigating the myriad mechanical issues, he discovered that the VIN said it was a 2.5 V6, but the engine in it was a 2.0 V6. It was a mechanical nightmare for him – and he’s a very competent backyard mechanic!. It got sold for a BMW 535i (which has proven highly reliable) in short order. The few remaining Millenias left here are usually dented and dirty, fitted with large chrome wheels, and, as you note principaldan, driven by teenagers.
These are very elegant cars. I never had the chance to drive one, but I suspect that they were great cars that failed for the wrong reasons (market perception, maybe high price?). Sad. If Lexus has built this and called it the ES300, it would’ve been a smash hit.
and there lies the problem. If Toyota built this and stuck a lexus badge on it then it would sell in droves. If Toyota built this car and stuck a Toyota badge on it it would not sell at all. People in the USA were not willing to spend luxury car money on a “mere” Toyota, Honda, Mazda or Nissan. This is why Toyota, Honda, Nissan created luxury divisions so as to divorce the parent company from the luxury brands they created. It worked for them. Mazda declined to offer a luxury division and thus the last gen 929 and the Millenia sold like shit.
Even in Japan, I think the Sentia lost out to cars sold here as Lexus or Infiniti models, including the Toyota Aristo (GS300) and Windom (ES). (Toyota was pretty explicit in its Japanese marketing that the Windom was the car sold in the U.S. as the ES300, which apparently Japanese buyers found impressive.)
It didn’t help that the 929 had a tiny trunk for a luxury car (a similar problem killed the J30), a relatively wimpy V6, and a sloppy chassis by class standards. While some of it comes down to image and marketing, I think Mazda simply wasn’t as smart as Lexus (ES250 aside) in avoiding amateur missteps in the building of their luxury brand. It’s too bad. While Mazda’s current enthusiast bent makes them the brand I’m personally most likely to buy from (them or Subaru), one does wonder what could have been with Amati, had they done it right.
Mazda had its own Lexus badge, called Xedos. In the nineties they had the Xedos 6 and (see below) the Xedos 9 with a 2.5i V6. I assume the Xedos 9 was fully based on the Mazda 929.
They just sold a handful of them back then.
Xedos was a small sub-brand of Mazda, similar to Vignale of Ford Europe or Denali of GMC. It was sold only in Europe. Eunos was what it was called in Japan. All of these cars were still badged as Mazdas though.
Yes, it was actually a Mazda 929 Xedos 9. Here’s the smaller 6 model. I also remember its brand / model logo, a double X.
I always remembered seeing photos of the Xedos 6 (possibly in Road & Track) and thinking it seemed like a better-looking version of the 626. Too bad we never actually got them here…
Nope. The Xedos 6 was a compact, FWD sedan also sold as the Eunos 500. The Xedos 9 was simply a FWD Mazda Millennia.
Interestingly, the planned design for the V12 Amati 1000 ended up being used for the re skinned 929/Sentia. Very bland and bulbous in comparison.
I never understood why you’d pay more for a Millennia than a 929. Wait, can anyone confirm which one was more expensive?
List price-wise, the 929 was about $3,500 more than the Millennia S and a good deal more than the base Millennia.
That was sort of true in Japan, but because the Japanese Sentia was also offered in cheaper grades with a less-powerful SOHC V-6, there was some overlap with the Millennia.
The redesigned Sentia did indeed adopt most of the styling of the aborted Amati flagship:
A friend’s father drove a 1986-91 generation 929. He was in his late 50s, owned his own business and made good money — the kind of person one expects to own a luxury car. He loved the 929 and would talk your ear off about its virtues.
To Mazda’s great misfortune, there aren’t a lot of car buyers who think like he did.
I was never hooked somuch on japanese cars BUT this Mazda had been in the bunch of potential “to buy” cars before a Mercury Tracer (aka Mazda 323/Protegé) had been finally chosen…
“Simulated” pillarless hardtop!
I remember when these were nearly new, it seems like better than 90% of them were that “creme” color.
I think what led to this car’s lackluster sales was it’s predecessor’s boxy design combined with it’s lack of a “pedigree”, and this iteration’s too close for comfort, styling with it’s similarity to the 626.
I’ve considered a 626 several times, as well as a Millenia as a DD but the automatic transmission in most Mazdas models is considered to be a bit “fragile”.
iirc, the Japanese upmarket brands were a means to finesse the “voluntary import restraints” in the 80s. As the quotas were based on numbers, the companies could make more profit on fewer cars by moving upmarket and charging a fatter margin on a higher price.
The plan never got traction at Mazda, whether due to the smaller company not having the resources of the Japanese big three to put into building a new brand with a premium image, or being held down by Ford.
Yeah, and they were only supposed to last a few years, but the U.S. government extended them (probably to the Japanese automakers’ dismay) until 1994. This also could be a reason as to why Amati never took off. By that point Mazda didn’t need it and could concentrate on selling large numbers of small cars.
Mazda had to kill Amati at the 11th hour because the economic bust of the early 90s in Japan, combined with the recession in the US, left them overextended.
Mazda had spent a ton of development money during the Japanese “bubble” in an attempt to become Japan’s #3 automaker. They opened several new distribution channels in Japan (something unique to that market; they’re not quite full marques, and worth a post all on their own), offering several variations on models with different styling and interiors for the different channels.
In the US, Mazda had, by calendar year 1992, three coupes (MX-3, MX-6, and RX-7) plus the Miata, in a market that was abandoning sporty coupes in droves. Billions were spent on cars that didn’t sell in the volumes necessary. Then the yen went crazy strong against the dollar and prices went up 20%+ in just a few years in the US.
Mazda hit a cash crunch in 1993, and couldn’t afford to launch the Amati brand. They ended up selling enough of the company to Ford to give them control (Ford already owned 25% of Mazda before this) and Amati was scuttled.
The model line would have had three choices:
Amati 500 (this was done and US certified, so it was offered as the Millenia in the US in 1995)
Amati 1000/1200/Pegasus – Based on a stretched 929 chassis, this would have had the 4.0L V12
Amati Cosmo – The Eunos Cosmo coupe sold in Japan was engineered to be able to handle LHD. This was to be offered with the two- and three-rotor engines as it was in Japan. Notable for being the first production three-rotor car, first production GPS equipped car, and most expensive car ever offered by a Japanese automaker, adjusted for inflation. I believe only the Lexus LF-A and perhaps the new GT-R has surpassed it.
I agree those new Mazda brands/retail channels deserve a topic of their own!
I think Autozam, Eunos and Efini worked way more like different brands than their equivalent retail channels from Nissan or Toyota. Their ads don’t show the Mazda brand, for instance. And they even sold cars from other companies: Eunos had Citroën, Autozam sold Lancia/Autobianchi.
Confusingly, here is a link from some brochure with the whole Mazda family, including those European imports: http://minkara.carview.co.jp/en/userid/175064/car/88591/543545/photo.aspx
Also, remember Mazda made cars were also being sold at the time as Fords at “Autorama” dealers, alongside imported, proper Ford vehicles.
Sorry for the multiple posts, but here is a Japanese advert for this 929, called Efini MS-8 there
http://youtu.be/sX6i6_-M0es
And a manual from Eunos Citroën.
The ɛ̃fini MS-8 was Mazda 626/Cronos based; the MS-9 was a near clone of the 929/Sentia.
Yes! The Eunos 500/Xedos 6, the Clef, and the US 626 were all based on the same platform as the Capella, yet they were all very different. Four different styles off the same platform, and none sold well enough to justify the differences, except perhaps the US 626 and Japanese Capella.
To me, the biggest loss from Amati’s abortion wasn’t the V12 sedan, but the fact that the Eunos Cosmo was never sold in North America. It had been engineered to sell here, but once the luxury brand was dropped, there was no way Mazda was going to attempt to sell it for the ~$50,000 in 1994 dollars it would have cost as a Mazda.
Sort of. The VRA certainly helped push up prices, but the Japanese automakers’ principal solution to the import limits was to get their U.S. factories online, which most of them did. (Honda had been planning that before the VRA, and had actually bought the land in Ohio in the late ’70s, although the limits obvious provided an additional incentive to hurry it up.)
There were several other reasons Honda set up Acura, but the big one for them and for Toyota and Nissan was that their U.S. sales execs (and in Toyota’s case, an extensive third-party marketing study) stressed that it would be very difficult to sell luxury cars wearing the same badges and from the same dealers as Civics or Tercels. Toyota management in Japan was kind of bitter about that, since they didn’t have that problem at home and the original brief of the LS/Celsior was a new flagship to commemorate Toyota’s 50th anniversary, but admitted that it was necessary.
For Mazda, I think it was really more follow the leader. Honda and Toyota were making money selling luxury cars in the States, so there was an obvious opportunity. Also, Japanese tax laws changed in the late ’80s so that selling that kind of flagship at home was a more realistic possibility. Part of the reason earlier big Japanese luxury cars hadn’t much traction for export was that automakers had to tiptoe around the size-and-displacement-based tax class structure or nobody but company vice presidents would be able to afford the cars in the home market.
My Mother purchased one from the final model year in 1995. In Bourdeaux Mica like the car in the top picture. It was an absolute stunner when new and had a very comfortable and quiet ride. They had trouble moving them and I recall it being $6,000 off MSRP.
We kept it for 185k mi and it kept running, though it had chronic A/C problems and the clearcoat started to fall off by year 8. No to mention the sun visor mirror that fell off and fried the body computer… none of the electrics worked quite right after that. Nonetheless, except for a few dead batteries the car never once stranded us. Great car.
This is another car that has virtually disappeared from the road, I remember when they were new, it was a very good looking car at the time, the door windows were hardtop style, though I think there still was a hidden B-pillar in there. I remember the solar powered fan was a big deal, a local news station even did a puff filler piece on it when the 929 debuted, sending their bimbo-ey reporter over to a local Mazda dealer to see the “solar fan”.
Mazda was on a roll styling wise in the early 90’s, this 929, the 626 & MX6 coupe, the MX5 Miata, and or course, the very pretty last generation RX7.
It’s too bad North American automakers never adopted the pseudo 4 door hardtop styling of this car and the Vigor.
About as close as it got from a domestic maker was the 1995 Oldsmobile Aurora and Buick Riviera.
A few more come to mind:
Current Camaro and Challenger. Dodge / Plymouth Neon, both coupe and sedan.
I forgot that the first gen Neons had hardtop doors. So did the last Eldorados.
That look was hugely popular in Japan in the late ’80s. There had been some four-door hardtops earlier than that, but it took off around 1986–87. There were a few actual hardtops and a lot of hardtop-style cars like the Vigor, the 1989–93 four-door Integra, and the second-generation Lexus ES.
I think maybe the reason it wasn’t more broadly adopted in the States was that there wasn’t any single example that was a runaway hit and the cars sold here that did follow that idiom weren’t really marketed as hardtops, so there wasn’t a general perception of their being something novel or special.
I remember when these came out.
They looked good at certain angles and ungainly from others.
A local mechanic had one in that cream color mentioned above.
This car in a Belfair wrecking yard is the only 929 I remember seeing. It had been there long enough to lose a passenger door and a lot of interior pieces when I photographed it, but the remaining doors still opened and closed as they probably had when the car was new.
With no body damage, I suppose that a failed transmission or a significant engine problem resulted in its last trip to the wrecking yard.
These are still seen in NZ there were quite a few brought in used if survivor numbers are anything to go by and the good news for anyone who wants one they are cheap but our fuel isnt so that could explain it.
Reminds me of the Merit in San Andreas, probably because I’ve never seen one in the flesh so that would be the only means to recognize one.
+1 always thought that too. Pretty sure that’s what it’s listed as at IGCD
+2 Incidentally I just picked up my copy of the game again tonight. Knew it was supposed to be a Mazda 929 but never saw a real one. No idea it was this close to the real car (most cars in the game are not so closely copied from a real model).
Also had no idea this 929 looked so much like an inflated 626. Not bad, but a bit too oriental for many.
I really need to get a new PS2 controller and fire up SA again. Loved the extensive eclectic mix of cars in that game!
+3. GTA totally destroyed that car for me. Couldn’t even see the one on the top page without thinking about it. And in the game, it’s such a joke of a car! I wonder for how many people that game ruined the brand value of that car…
I wanted to like these being Japan-built and RWD and but they looked and drove like whales. I hated 90s styling even the Fleetwood Broughams. These felt so heavy and slow the engine really labored. The car I was thinking the 929 should have been came out as the Millennia which was one of the most beautiful sedans from the 90s.
I’d be interested to see CA sales figures for the 929 as I seem to recall quite a number of them around the west side of LA back in the day. Of course, SoCal drivers buy/lease a lot of cars and have an unlimited appetite for aspirational, luxury, and near luxury cars of all types and if dealers were providing significant discounts off sticker prices, that probably put a fair number on the road. I always thought the 929 was nice looking but its quiet styling blended in without making much of a statement and, without a separate luxury division nameplate like the Infiniti J30, the car couldn’t compete in its category. In a kind of ironic twist, today I sometimes mistake the new Mazda 6 for a more expensive car.
I knew a guy in the 90s who had one of these. Burgundy, like in the lead photo. I recall thinking how elegant it was, and that I expected to see a lot more of them in coming years. But I didn’t.
I worked at an independent body shop that was located on the local Mazda dealer’s property and did their collision repairs during the 929’s day. They were reasonably popular in this part of the world (central Texas). We repaired many of them, and I drove some of them during the repair process. They are a large car, and drove like one. The steering was over assisted and had little road feel. They were horribly expensive to repair (both body and mechanical), which is a reason they have all but disappeared today. The interior trim did not hold up to the Texas heat at all. The plastic fell apart, and the leather crumbled. They looked nice and had all the amenities, but in many cases did not work out as a long term vehicle. The Millenia’s shared many of the same problems, but drove better and were a tighter feeling car all around. You did lose the back seat room, though. An odd quirk they had that I haven’t seen with any other brand is the outside temperature readout only had 2 digits. So when it got above 99 degrees, the readout stayed at 99.
Some may recall that the first generation MPV van was also based on this platform. It made an above average minivan, but there again it shared many of the same faults, and was an expensive vehicle to own.
The two-digit temp readout would have been designed for Celsius – 100F is only 38C. They should have thought of America, and allowed for an extra 1 in front.
“An odd quirk they had that I haven’t seen with any other brand is the outside temperature readout only had 2 digits. So when it got above 99 degrees, the readout stayed at 99.”
The engineers didn’t take into account cultural differences. Japan uses Celsius, not Fahrenheit as we do. They figured two digits was adequate to cover the possible range of ambient temperature. 99 Celsius is 210 degrees Fahrenheit!
Once I was in Tokyo, Japan and rode in a Toyota taxicab. I was surprised to see the dashboard labels were in English.
I loved these 929s when they came out! Such a gorgeous Jaguaresque shape. They were about NZ$95,000 when released here, so sales were limited. Of course with NZ being a thriving market for used JDM imports, many more arrived since. The NZ-new ones were badged 929, and the JDM ones we got were badged either Mazda Sentia or Efini MS-9 (there was a whole family of Efini models).
There are still a few of this shape 929/Sentia/MS-9 left here (and at least one local to me), mostly now lowered, wearing large chrome exhausts and larger chromier wheels. They still look surprisingly good like that!
The Korean market got Kia-built hand-me-downs of the 80s 929 in the 90s, then they got a concurrent Sentia in the late 90s called the Enterprise. The Enterprise (ne Sentia) was the last Mazda-designed luxury car from Kia, as the Hyundai takeover expunged all Mazda DNA from their product line.
Replaced by this, neither big sellers, it was tough to go up against the Hyundai Grandeur.
I owned one of the slab-sided predecessors, the 1988 929 (covered elsewhere here I believe) which was “Tokyo-by-night” luxurious and utterly reliable, but stodgy. Crummy at speed. I bought it in 93 and sold it two years later for $200 less than what I paid for it.
By contrast, these 92-95 929s were gorgeous cars. In the spring of 1992 a colleague in Hong Kong drove me back to my hotel from a posh Stanley dinner party in a brand new one he had just purchased. As we wound our way down the hills back into Wanchai I felt on top of the world. These cars were sleek and beautiful inside and out.
I have seen a couple on the roads recently here in Dallas, in not-bad survivor condition. They still look great. The Millenias have aged more quickly, seemingly, but I see a good-condition Millenia S in my area fairly often…Clearly, the owner knows what he has.
As for the 929, here’s another obligatory cool JDM ad from the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3tYGQpvOSQ