The Mazda Museum, Hiroshima, Japan

I thought I’d follow Derek from Pacificcoastjdm.com’s lead and visit a car museum. Let’s take a look at the Mazda Museum in Hiroshima.

What a day. Due to some “unforseen circumstances” I failed to reserve a place on the Mazda museum tour in advance, just like I advised in our Japanese Car Museums: 15 To Get You Started article. Trust me when I say that my father, who was in Japan at the time and eager to visit one of Japan’s car manufacturer facilities, was bitterly disappointed when I told him that the tours were booked out until 3 or 4 days after he left. Not wanting to give up on a technicality we decided to head over to Hiroshima anyway to see the Atomic Bomb Dome and Miyajima, and, if lady luck was on our side, head on down to Mazda and beg for a spot on the tour. Well begging was unnecessary because no sooner had I told the girl at the front desk at Mazda Headquarters that we didn’t have a reservation, she cut me off and said about 10 members cancelled about 45 minutes prior! It truly was a high five moment with my old man’s face beaming like he’d just inherited full ownership of the Asahi Beer factory in Nishinomiya. So after a bad nights sleep wondering what could’ve been had I reserved a spot on the tour like I’d told myself to, it was all good within 30 minutes of stepping off the N700 Shinkansen from Kobe (which took only 65 minutes to reach Hiroshima by the way!)

And the tour? To be honest, it was quick. It felt much quicker than the 90 minutes duration they quoted on the website. I would’ve liked another half hour to browse the historic cars in the automobile collection area but the tour guide was running a little behind schedule so had to move us along after what seemed like less than 10 minutes. The tour began with the visitors collecting their ID card lanyards and hopping on the Mazda tour bus which then took us through the Mazda Honsha (HQ) plant facitlites. About 10 minutes later we arrived at the Mazda Museum lobby and were given another 10 minutes or so to look aorund the lobby and suvenir “shop” (more or less the front desk with a few shelves alongside stocked with gifts). We then sat down to watch a brief movie showing us an overview of the plant facitlites and general information about Mazda’s history, philosophy and future direction. After that we were taken upstairs to the 2nd floor overpass to the building across the street housing the vehicle collection and assembly line.

The vehicle collection has models from every important part of Mazda’s history including it’s first 3-wheeler motorcycle (or “3 wheel drive” as the tour guide put it) and the Ryuga design concept. After that we saw the Rotary section and was also another highlight getting us up real close to the Mazda 787B Le Mans race car and the infamous quad-rotor R26B engine. The tour guide told us the R26B was the only quad-rotor rotary engine in the world but they obviously haven’t bothered to tell her about Scoot Sports 12A and 13B 4-rotor complete engines on offer, or the early 60′s four rotor prototype engine on display about 10 feet away. There was a good engine display adjacent to the 787B exhibit featuring a moving display of the inner workings of a rotary engine and a full line up of rotaries from the diminutive single rotor 3A to the current RENESIS 13B-MSP. Just after the vehicle and engine exhibits we were shown how a RX-8 is put together right from it’s clay model design stage all the way through to prototype crash testing and production of all its parts. This was the only area where I didn’t feel rushed and had time to actually listen to everything the tour guide had to say.

I enjoyed everything of course but the real highlight of the tour is the U1 assembly line (which was the only area we were told not to take any photos of). While we didn’t see any Mazda RX-8s on the line at the time, we did see a couple of Mazda Roadsters (MX-5/MX-5 Miata) and some Mazdaspeed Axelas (Mazda 3 MPS) mixed in with a bunch of other passenger cars going down the assembly line and to see them being put together by robotic and human hands in unison was worth the effort to get there. Seeing the finished cars being loaded onto the car carrier at the end of the assembly line building really hit home on how efficient they have become at producing cars of multiple models and specifications on the one line.

I have to say it, any Mazda enthusiast would be crazy to pass up a visit to the Mazda Museum, it’s free and has to be one of, if not the easiest motor museum to get to in Japan. It’s just a short 2 minute walk from Mukainada station, only two stops from JR Hiroshima station which takes all of 5 minutes on a slightly rickety old train by Japanese standards. The English tours are run once daily from 10AM and please don’t forget to make a reservation about 2 weeks prior to your visit! The tours are usually booked out about a week or so in advance and it’s better to be safe knowing that you’ll be able to see the facility than rely on luck like we did.

I give the tour 4 out of 5 stars, minus one star for allowing us only limited time to see the historic cars.

Words/Images: Justin Karow

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