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Mazda planning 'aggressive' dealer shakeup

Mazda has set an ambitious goal of selling 400,000 units by the end of the 2015 Japanese fiscal year in March 2016, and to do that, it's going to need to take some aggressive action. That means that underperforming members of its 637-showroom strong dealer network are about to get the axe.
The purge won't just be limited to dealers that aren't performing, though. Mazda will seek to consolidate poorly located dealers and build new showrooms in better locations. It still isn't clear how many dealers are being targeted or at what point Mazda would end its cull.
This consolidation of dealers is all part of a one-two punch for the Japanese brand, that will also see increased marketing efforts in 35 key areas. Of those markets, Mazda is placing a special emphasis on New York and LA, although there's not much mention of what other regions are being looked at.

Mazda RX-3 restomod makes Leno scream, us cheer

The Mazda RX-3 Savanna was the rotary-engined version of the Mazda 808 Grand Familia. Sold in the US from 1971 to 1978, the little Japanese fastback earned a reputation as an excellent racecar, winning events all over the world. A racing connection is how a fantastic 1973 restomod example owned by Savant Young made its way to Jay Leno's Garage. Young said that when he was a boy his uncle used to street race an RX-3, and Young liked how the RX-3 sounded and the fact that a tiny import could go up against and beat big V8s of the time. Leno admitted that he has no connection to the RX-3, saying it's not the kind of car he typically likes. But he liked Young's custom update so much that when he saw the coupe sitting outside the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles, he waited for the owner to show up. Young's changes over the 15 years he's owned the car include dropping in the rotary engine and running gear from the second-generation Mazda RX-7, bridge-ported and methane injected. At 15 pounds of boost he says it's putting out about 400 horsepower. The rear end comes from a Toyota Hilux half-ton pickup, to help put all that power down in a car that weighs maybe 2,100 pounds. The color is taken from the Lamborghini palette. Disc brakes all around, 14-inchers up front, control the velocity. Nothing controls the gas mileage, said to be "maybe 12 mpg." And nothing could stop Leno from whooping it up during the driver. Check out the fun in the video above.

Why we can't have better headlights here in the U.S.

It wouldn't be a European auto show if we weren't teased with at least one mainstream vehicle we can't have here. At the Geneva Motor Show last week, the small but vocal contingent of shooting-brake buffs lamented that the Mazda6 wagon won't be coming to our shores, although they can take comfort in the fact that the vehicle won't get the torquey 250-horsepower 2.5-liter turbocharged gasoline engine we'll get here. Mercedes-Benz also announced a new headlight technology in Geneva that likely won't be available here anytime soon. It's just the latest in a long line of innovative and potentially lifesaving front-lighting solutions that the federal government doesn't allow in this country due to outdated standards — and a current lack of leadership at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Mercedes-Benz's new Digital Light system that debuted in Geneva uses a computer chip to activate more than a million micro-reflectors to better illuminate the road ahead. The Digital Light headlamps works with the vehicle's cameras, sensors and navigation mapping to adjust lighting for the given location and situation and to detect other road users. The Digital Light technology also serves as an extended head-up display of sorts by projecting symbols on the pavement ahead to alert drivers to, say, slippery conditions or pedestrians in the road. And it can even project lines on the road in a construction zone or through tight curves to show the driver the correct path. Digital Light will be available on Mercedes-Maybach vehicles later this year, although like any technology it's bound to trickle down to less expensive vehicles. That is, if we ever get it here in the U.S. Audi, a leader in automotive lighting, has repeatedly run into snags trying to bring state-of-the-art car headlights to the U.S. The German luxury automaker's recently introduced matrix laser headlight system, which performs many of the same trick as Mercedes-Benz's Digital Light, also isn't legal on U.S. roads. And five years after the introduction of its matrix-beam LED lighting, which illuminates more of the road without blinding oncoming motorists with brights by simultaneously operating high and low beams, Audi still can't bring that technology to the U.S. either.