Once upon a time, Mazda sold a pickup truck in the United States. You need to go back about 15 years, and even then, it was really a Ford Ranger with Mazda badges and a different grille. The Mazda B-Series went away in 2009, just a couple of years before the small Ranger was canceled in the US.
Now, with Mazda enjoying some success in the North American market, a new truck could be on the way. Mazda CEO Masahiro Moro alluded to the possibility in a recent interview with Car and Driver, suggesting it's a bit more complicated than one might think. For starters, Mazda doesn't have any truck platform on which to work with.
"We could work with other OEMs to get it," Moro told Car and Driver. "Our coverage of the total industry is only 50 percent because we don't have a pickup truck. It's [a] good time to think about a future portfolio."
This statement could be more telling than people realize. Mazda already works with an OEM on a pickup truck called the BT-50. It's based on the mid-size Isuzu D-Max and built in Thailand for just a handful of markets, including Australia. You can get a BT-50 in three cab configurations—single, extended, or double—and naturally, it's available with either two-wheel or four-wheel drive. The truck is currently in its third generation, which launched in 2020.
That's not exactly a small truck though. Furthermore, the D-Max isn't sold in any form in the US, so Mazda would need to do way more than just slap a badge on it and be done. Curiously, Moro also waxed poetic about a possible future for the rotary engine, which has long been rumored to be making a comeback beyond an EV range extender. We all assumed it would be for a new sports car, but a small rotary-powered pickup could be cool. That takes us back to the early days of the Mazda B-Series in the 1960s and 1970s, when the tables were turned and Mazda was the foundation for a rebadged Ford truck.
In any case, nothing is confirmed And for now, all we have to go on is Moro's optimism. But the Ford Maverick's success seemingly has Mazda's interest. Who knows what might happen in the next few years.
Source: Car and Driver
