Full credit must go to Mazda for making rotary engine technology work where many others failed or didn’t even make the attempt. Sure, Mazda never truly conquered the rotary’s thirst, but across more than 50 years of development, they made it smooth, increasingly powerful and, most importantly, reliable. When the last mass-production rotary-engined Mazda RX-8 came off the line in 2012, it marked the end of an era. An era that was arguably at its most exciting in the 1970s.
Mazda’s history as a carmaker can be traced back to 1931, when the ‘Mazda-Go’ was released. Essentially a motorised 3-wheel rickshaw, the Mazda-Go was more motorcycle than truck, but it set a template for Mazda commercial vehicles that lasted for decades. Conventional four-wheeled trucks followed the Mazda-Go, along with larger versions of the 3-wheeler and other commercial vehicles.
The very first Mazdas sold in Australia are believed to be 50 units of the ‘T600’ 3-wheel truck, locally assembled from CKD packs in 1959, while the Bongo vans of the 1970s, Bravo utes of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and even today’s BT-50 can all be traced back to the Mazda-Go.
When speaking of the earliest Mazda vehicles, it’s worth noting that the
