Mazda3 not a Puggy clone

The man who takes the kudos (and the kicks) for the styling of the latest Mazda3 is Laurens van den Acker. A native of the Netherlands and former employee of Audi, Volvo and Ford, the current General Manager of Design at Mazda (more here) has styled the Nagare concept, from which 'flows' Mazda's current design strategy.

That new styling direction, as personified in the latest Mazda3, has already proved a little controversial -- and the car isn't even released yet. Pundits have drawn parallels between the new Mazda small car's front-end styling and that of the Peugeot 308 (and 207, for that matter).

But Van den Acker points out that the Mazda3 was already well and truly under development during 2006 -- at least 12 months ahead of the release of either of the Peugeot small cars.

Furthermore, removing the grille above the bumper reduces the aerodynamic drag over the body work and concentrates high-pressure air ahead of the engine-cooling intake, the only point at the front of the car where that can be justified. So the Mazda, on that basis is perhaps an unintentional 'copy' of the Peugeot, as a consequence of aerodynamic dictates as much as styling provisions.

Van den Acker, in Australia for a Mazda media event, laid out the groundwork for the way the new '3' looks.

Mazda had been locked into its own version of a "Traditional, tired graphic" for the front end, says Van den Acker -- a styling theme which the entire Mazda range had adopted as its standardised corporate look, one which was beginning to inspire the same look in competitors' cars. He cited Hyundai, Kia and -- of all companies -- Opel as examples.

Comparing the 2004 Mazda3 with an artist's impression of the 2010 Opel Astra from German magazine, Auto Motor und Sport, it appears that the German designers are more than a little smitten with the Mazda's looks -- and not just the front end of the Mazda either. If the artist's impression is substantiated, the next-gen Astra will share front-end, hipline and C-pillar styling with the four-year old '3'.

So Van den Acker wants to break away from an increasingly conventional style that is beginning to spawn imitators, but he also wants to distance Mazda3's styling from the current 'medium' car look with its mid-sized version of the Mazda2's small grille or the Mazda6's large grille. Indeed, he wanted to get away from a style that was based entirely on size alone, as an indicator of hierarchical status.

The styling for the latest Mazda3 is, in the chief designer's view, rather like a cheeky younger brother, compared with the more staid 'older brother' look of the Mazda6.

Van den Acker equates corporate styling with brand image. He explained to the journalists that car companies go through four stages. There's the initial stage where the company fluffs around, trying to find a look that embodies the image they want for the brand, sometimes taking backward steps or sidesteps. Some companies never get beyond that stage.

In the second stage, there's an idea for a look that ferments and evolves over time and the brand image improves as the style finds its footing.

Companies such as Mazda are in the third 'mature' stage, where the family look is established. But unlike BMW, for example, Mazda doesn't have an especially long-standing corporate look.

"We don't have a lot of history," admits Van den Acker, but: "we're not burdened by a hundred years of grille management," he also acknowledges.

The critical element of the third stage is that a company has to revitalise the image before the company's products and corporate style enters the fourth stage -- obsolescence. Jaguar is an example of a company taking the corporate look to its logical (obsolete) extreme -- and that company is now fighting to return to the mature stage, where it will be 'relevant'.

Van den Acker cites the much lamented 'Bangle' styling of current BMWs as an example of a company revitalising its family look -- without significant impact on sales -- to keep the company relevant to existing and new buyers.

So this is why the next generation of Mazdas will incorporate some existing styling cues, but packaged in a radically different way -- one that revitalises the brand's corporate look.

The trick is to keep Mazda bouncing up and down in the third stage, introducing a new look with known elements to displace the earlier generation of styling and then repeat the process before the new styling becomes 'old'.

So far, the Japanese company seems to be on a winner.

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