Mazda’s corporate museum in Hiroshima has welcomed its two millionth visitor, 32 years after opening in May 1994. The milestone guests were 71 fifth-grade pupils from a local elementary school on a social studies field trip. Mazda marked the occasion with a ceremony attended by president and CEO Masahiro Moro, and gave the school a scale model of the Iconic SP concept.
A school trip becomes a milestone
Mazda has announced that the Mazda Museum, the company’s corporate museum on its headquarters site in Fuchu-cho, Aki-gun, Hiroshima Prefecture, has now received two million visitors in total since it opened in May 1994.
The two millionth guests were a group of 71 fifth-grade pupils from Ohkou Elementary School in Hiroshima, who visited the museum as part of a social studies field trip.
A commemorative ceremony was held on the same day, with Mazda president and CEO Masahiro Moro congratulating the class. As a gift, the company presented the school with a 1:18 scale model of the Mazda Iconic SP.
What Mazda’s CEO said
Moro used the ceremony to thank visitors rather than to talk about products.
“This milestone of two million visitors has been made possible thanks to each and every guest who has visited the Mazda Museum over the years. Looking ahead, we will continue to cherish every opportunity to connect with our visitors and further enhance the museum as a place where people can experience the Mazda brand and its deep ties to the local community.”
Addressing the pupils directly, he added that he would be delighted if the tour left them thinking that cars are cool and that manufacturing is exciting.
Three decades of telling the Mazda story
The museum has been open since May 1994 and covers Mazda’s history, its technologies and its approach to building cars. Two major rebuilds, in 2005 and again in 2022, have turned it into a single narrative that runs from the company’s founding through to its plans for the future, according to Mazda.
Alongside owners and enthusiasts, the museum draws visitors from Japan and abroad with an interest in the car industry and in Hiroshima’s manufacturing culture. It is also used as a teaching venue for school groups and educational trips. In recent years Mazda has added more hands-on activities, including casting workshops aimed at children.
Why a factory museum still matters
Brand museums have become a standard fixture for large carmakers, and they do more than display old models: they anchor a company to the place it comes from and give it a low-cost route to younger audiences long before those visitors are old enough to buy anything.
That link is unusually direct for Mazda, whose identity is bound up with Hiroshima and with the region’s engineering trade. Handing a class of ten- and eleven-year-olds a model of the Iconic SP — the sports car concept Mazda has used to signal its rotary ambitions — fits the same logic as the casting workshops: it sells the idea of manufacturing rather than a specific car.
Mazda says it intends to keep using the museum to show more people how vehicles are made and to pass on Hiroshima’s manufacturing heritage to future generations. The museum remains open to visitors on the company’s headquarters grounds in Fuchu-cho.
Source: newsroom.mazda.com