Last week, we had a look at the unfortunate situation Mazda put themselves in by fielding the overly portly Cronos (marketed as the Mazda 626 abroad) to take over from the Capella, which ended in disaster. That was the second disaster of 1991, though. The other one was ɛ̃fini, the marque that nobody needed, perfectly symbolized by the MS-9, the badge-engineered top-of-the-range that nobody bought.
Let’s start with the MS-9 itself. You might know it as the Mazda 929; it was also marketed as the Mazda Sentia HD in Japan. The Mazda version debuted in early 1991, replacing the long-serving Luce as the large RWD saloon atop the Hiroshima carmaker’s range. The ɛ̃fini version, which only differed in its emblems, grille and name, arrived in October 1991.
Unlike the Luce, the Sentia/MS-9 never included a Wankel engine option – a shame, since this was the time when Mazda’s rotary had reached its apex (seals, har har) with the 20B triple-rotor used in the Eunos Cosmo, as well as the Le Mans win that took everyone by surprise. Instead, the Sentia/MS-9 made do with a couple of the Luce HC’s piston engines: a 2.5 and a 3-litre DOHC V6.
The wood on the centre console seems to make our feature car a 3-litre – either a “30 Type III” grade or a 30 Type IV without the leather, as those came with a cowhide interior as standard. But Japanese customers were never keen on the stuff, so perhaps the person who shelled out ¥4.1m for this car back in 1993 was allowed to specify cloth upholstery. The 3-litre V6 provides 200hp, using a 4-speed auto to send power to the independently-sprung rear wheels. These MS-9s also came with speed-sensitive four-wheel steering.
One optional extra that shows Mazda’s dedication to technological innovation in the service of passenger comfort was the solar-paneled sunroof. The purpose of this setup was to independently power a pair of fans at the rear of the cabin that extracts hot air when the outside temperature rises above 15°C, keeping the interior much cooler than it would be otherwise. Pity our feature car doesn’t have that gizmo – but the doilies, oh they’re here all right. Cool indeed.
The Mazda Luces of the ‘70s and ‘80s were all rather angular cars. With the Sentia/MS-9, Mazda went full jelly bean. It was the style at the time, to be sure, and a rather sad style it was, too. However, the Sentia/MS-9 managed to avoid the blob-like bodies that befell so many car designs that followed this trend. The infamous “pillared hardtop” frameless windows play a part in adding lightness to this design, but that is not sufficient on its own to succeed in making a car look good – see the Toyota Ceres or the Nissan Presea, for a counter-example.
So all in all, the Sentia/MS-9 seems to be a very decent car, a handsome design with a competent engine and enough toys to warrant a considerable asking price. The issue, it seems, was that its rivals (Nissan Cedric/Gloria, Toyota Crown, Toyota Celsior, Mitsubishi Diamante, Honda Vigor/Inspire) were all pretty good as well. The Mazda/ɛ̃fini effort, while eminently suitable, did not stand out as particularly daring, well-built or stylish compared to any of its peers. This is unlike the RX-7, for instance, which had a cult following and a turbocharged Wankel, or the Eunos Roadster (a.k.a. Mazda Miata), which became the default mid-life crisis mobile for thousands of happy people the world over.
Yes, it was a Eunos in Japan, that Miata. I guess we should get into the whole Eunos/Autozam/ɛ̃fini F-up. In the late ‘80s, Mazda tried to ape GM and divide their sales networks by creating car brands. In 1989, they launched Autozam, which focused on kei cars and compacts, as well as Lancia and Autobianchi. That same year, the Eunos marque (and “store”) was created. That one’s mission statement was less obvious, but the Roadster/Miata and the final Cosmo ended up being sold under that brand, alongside several Mazda near-clones and re-badges. There were another three networks to cater to. One was Mazda pure and simple (Mazda Motors store); another one was Ford, who co-owned Autorama and used it to peddle their badge-engineered Mazdas, as well as the odd European or US Ford import.
This left the Mazda Auto stores as the fifth wheel, literally. But they were actually one of the oldest networks of the company, going back to Mazda’s first four-wheeled products in 1959. So in 1991, Mazda Auto stores all over the country started their metamorphosis into ɛ̃fini. The term, which is pronounced An-fee-nee (French for “infinite”), uses a stupid tilde-topped Greek epsilon to symbolize how impossibly sophisticated the whole affair is. Leave it to the Japanese to devise an alphabetic combo so unnatural as to be impossible to type on any computer keyboard. Besides, the proximity to Nissan’s Infiniti should have been cause enough to create a different name. Hubris much, Matsuda-san?
The ɛ̃fini range contained, aside from the MS-9, the Cronos-based MS-6 (1991-94; bottom right) and MS-8 (1992-98; top left), both ɛ̃fini exclusives, as well as a badge-engineered version of the Mazda MPV (1991-97; top right) and the third-gen RX-7 (1991-97; bottom left), which was also distributed by Mazda dealers. Other Mazdas (e.g. Bongo, Familia, Roadster) were also handled by the network, but not badged as ɛ̃fini. Furthermore, ɛ̃fini also carried the Citroën Xantia and XM until 1998. The “MS” acronym, by the way (and I swear I am not making this up), stands for the English(-ish) term “Megalo Spirits” which, in Mazda’s Concise Engrish Dictionary, is supposed to translate into “great thoughts.” Mind officially blown.
The whole multi-marque experiment was deemed a failure by about 1993. The Lexus-like luxury foreign brand Amati was killed in the crib and Mazda started to chop down the excess car lines. The MS-9 was thus killed off midway through 1994, just over a year before the Sentia HE took over. The Autozam Clef and AZ-1 were also axed at this time, though the marque and network was spared for the time being. Eunos was seen as the weakest of the new brands, so the network was merged with ɛ̃fini and the marque was killed off in 1996. Autozam and ɛ̃fini never really caught on either, so they were disposed of as car marques by 1998, the networks being gradually rebranded as Mazda over the next couple of years. Autorama switched to plain Ford in 1994; Mazda sold their share of the network to Ford in 1999, which ended up exiting the Japanese market altogether in 2016.
I’ve searched and re-searched, but the Internet seems not to know how many Sentia HDs were made in five years, let alone their ɛ̃fini-badged clone. Given the era, the amount of cars currently advertised for sale online and the fact that I’ve only seen one in three years, I’d say anything between a few hundred to a couple thousand MS-9s were made from late 1991 to mid-1994.
It’s hard to find anything positive to say about ɛ̃fini and Mazda’s whole clustermarque fiasco, but at least some of the cars were objectively interesting. The Autozam AZ-1 (to be featured very soon) was one, the Eunos Cosmo was another. And the ɛ̃fini MS-9, though a mere badge-engineering exercise, was at least a well-designed luxury “hardtop.” Pity the Megalo Spirits were not quite powerful enough to entice more folks to purchase one.
Errr… Looks like what was sold here in the EU as the Mazda Xedos (another one of these names) 9? Pretty much extinct now.
Xedos 6 and Xedos 9 were FWD, this was RWD.
Xedos 9 was sold in Australia as the Eunos 800, in the US as the Mazda Millenia, and in both markets was sold alongside the 929. Confusing for buyers given their similar positioning
The whole multi-brand experiment was a fiasco. But on a lighter note, these MS-9/929s remain one of my favourite Japanese cars ever. I trawl the classifieds occasionally looking for either one of these or the even rarer (in Australia) first gen Infiniti Q45
Same here! I’ve been patiently waiting for this author to cover this gen 929. They were fairly common in central Florida when I was growing up in the 90s.
I could never figure out why some Mazdas turned up in Australia wearing Eunos badges. Like, why did our MX3s come badged as a Eunos 30X? No explanation, just this funky name. I did semi-seriously look at a Eunos 800 once, a very nice car, though I was concerned about long-term serviceability of that smart Miller-cycle engine.
Like you, I love that HD-series 929, or Mazda Sentient.
An unpronounceable and unspellable brand should have been made by Prince, not Mazda.
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Those aren’t doilies! My lace-curtain Irish mother would correct you and tell you they are anitmacassars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimacassar
Antimacassar, hey? Amazing! Never saw that word before, but I am sure glad to have made the acquaintance. Thank you for this!
Lots of Irish descended hereabouts, so I knew the word. However, the Irish were far more anti-British than anti-Macassar, which they left to the the Dutch who turned up in that port in South Sulawesi and occupied it for 275 years. It is surely no small coincidence that it was the Japanese who threw them over in 1942, likely taking home with them their anti-Macassar attitude in 1945, though why they displayed that sentiment on their car seats is unclear.
Queen Victoria, who was anti Irish, anti non-Britain (except for the purposes of ruling her waves) and very likely against these Muslim Macassans, throws sand into the wheels of history here by going through much of her life dressed as a fat sofa covered in the things. Quite why is hard to know: perhaps she too thrilled to the drip of bado-nut oil in her locks, but since they too were laced-over, it will likely never be known.
Comment of the year!
In the late ‘80s, Mazda tried to ape GM and divide their sales networks by creating car brands.
It wasn’t GM they were aping, it was Toyota, which had created a number of sales channels for their products.
There’s a very significant difference between the Japanese “sales channel” approach and GM’s brands, which all had roots as individual car companies at one time which were bought by Durant but still operated as individual entities. That slowly changed during the Sloan decades, but there were still some unique chassis and drive train aspects until the late ’70s and into the ’80s.
When Saturn was created by GM in the late ’80s, it was essentially totally unique in all its technical elements, very unlike the numerous different versions of the Corolla or such being sold in Japan by various Toyota sales channels.
The Japanese sales channels were either just badge engineered, or key basic products were divvied up and assigned to certain channels based on different price/image/prestige levels.
One of the key reasons they did this in Japan is because historically dealers were quite small, and their owner and key sales staff developed strong long-term connections with their customers. This also required that the dealer’s cut of the sales price was higher than in the US, where larger dealer volumes were common. And haggling over prices in Japan was also generally not done or looked down on.
As we can see in this example, the difference between the Mazda 929 and this MS-9 amounts to minor trim and badging; nobody in Japan had any illusions about that. The differences were much less than say an Oldsmobile and Buick sedan of the same era.
These sales channels reflect the Japanese tradition of small retail establishments that were common in all walks of life. But of course they were inefficient, and once the economy crashed, it was a model that was increasingly doomed. The same thing has happened to some degree with Japanese retailing in general, but the resistance to big box stores there has been much greater.
It reflected a Japanese love and appreciation for subtlety; no one had genuine allusions that these cars sold by all these Mazda sales channels weren’t all Mazdas, but it created subtle distinctions in image and prestige and loyalties that were once an important aspect of Japanese culture.
Toyota had different sales channels, as did Honda, Nissan and Mazda. But only Mazda created new marques to go along with those sales channels. So no, Mazda weren’t looking at Toyota so much as GM, or the Big Three in general.
I understand that most GM brands have a historical background, but by the 80s (or even earlier), they were by and large cookie-cutter J-cars, X-cars and so on, with a few exceptions. Mazda saw the GM of the 80s and thought they could do something like that and get away with it. Exceptions were included in Mazda’s model, too: Eunos got the Cosmo, Efini got the RX7, etc.
But the Japanese buying public was underwhelmed by this exercise – subtle distinction was irrelevant and even confusing when nobody could figure out if Eunos was the luxury marque, or Mazda, or Efini. At least with GM you knew that your Cimarron was “worth” more than a Cavalier, even if nobody was under any illusion as to the badge-engineering exercise it actually was. You need a pecking order if you’re doing something like this, and Mazda failed to create one.
Maybe Mazda executives tried to use the same badge engineering strategy used by Chrysler in the 80’s-90’s.
I was in Japan when Mazda tried its multiple car lines. My car crazed Japanese buddies thought they were mad for doing it. They felt Mazda didn’t have the volume to do it. Instead, Mazda copied the multi-store theme of the other major car makers.
At least for my friend group, Toyota was the gold standard. They loved the reliability and simplicity. Another interesting thing was that white was by far the most popular colour and there was a Y50,000 upcharge for it. Apparently it is a Shinto thing.
Kei cars are, in my not so valuable opinion, are a lot of fun. My girlfriend at the time had a Suzuki Alto Works. We went all over Kyushu in it. It was not fast but it seemed pretty quick and the torque of the turbocharged motor made for not so much gear stick rowing.
Good memories. I am hoping to get back to Japan soon as my last visit was in 2015. I just love the place and feel very much at home there, even with my country-bumpkin Kyushu accent. Whenever I speak, I almost immediately get this, “Oh, you are from Kyushu!”
I could have swore Autozam was Russian. No, that’s AvtoVAZ a.k.a. Lada.
All those Mazda marques and that’s not even including the stillborn Amati, which was to have been Mazda’s answer to Lexus, cancelled at the last minute after they’d already recruited dealers, printed brochures, and tooled up for the for a new V12 engine that was intended to up the stakes in Japanese luxury sedans. Mazda probably would have badge-engineered it into a ɛ̃fini MS-13.
I would’ve loved to have seen Amati’s V-12 flagship hit the market. I was impressed with the Millenia, and I always thought…if that was their entry-level car, oh man, we missed out on some compelling product.
I always enjoy your postings, Tatra87, as much for the entertaining writing as for the high quality info. Mazda’a fortunes are an obtuse subject as far as I am concerned but you sure make it compelling reading.
I’ve been watching Tokyo Vice and though it can best be described as a middling crime drama in a an exotic setting, the cars are of of some interest and very much in the vein of your own Tokyo drama.
I likewise hold the roundy 929 in good regard. But I must confess I cannot recall hearing of this enfantini nomenclature cul de sac of the Great Mazda World Takeover crash. More than odd, though no odder than the plans themselves which were always high-reaching. I suppose like any boom, the craziness is only apparent in the thereafter. I remember it all seemed credible at the time, especially as Toyota really did effectively best the world with a made-up brand called Lexus.
Well-told, Tatrasan.
Site is eating all my comments, so I’ll just leave and little poo on the page here and retire for the day.