Mazda Motor Corporation is a Japan based automaker that provides vehicles worldwide.  In 2010, the company earned more than $30 million in revenue and employeed nearly 40,000 people.  Prior to becoming the large, international automaker that it is today, Mazda began as a small machine tool manufacturer.

On this day, January 30th, in 1920, Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd, was founded.  Toyo Kogyo would not officially become Mazda until 1984, but automobiles were made with the Mazda name prior to the change.  Toyo Kogyo’s first car, the Mazda-Go, was introduced in 1931.  Mazda cars would gain distinction from other Japanese vehicles with the development of the Wankel rotary engine, which would be featured in the 1967 Cosmo Sport model. The Cosmo Sport and the later-developed Mazda Rotary Pickup would play a key role in the growth of Mazda exports.  Interest in the rotary engine allowed Mazda to enter American markets in 1970.

Mazda continued to grow as an automobile exporter in the coming decades, but declines in the 1970s temporarily put the company through financial struggles.  Mazda began a partnership with Ford in 1979, which peaked in Ford taking a 33% stake in the company by the 1990s.  In later years, Ford’s control of Mazda would dwindle down to 3%.