Hiroshima is the home of Mazda and the birth place of the mx5-miata-roadster. You’d think that the tour of the Mazda Museum and assembly line would only appeal to freaks like me but it is really quite a fun tour that almost anyone would enjoy. I highly recommend taking it if you have a chance to come to Hiroshima. It’s held on weekdays twice a day at 9:30 and 13:00. They also offer an English tour in the afternoon session. Above photos are of the Mazda Head Office lobby.

More photos of the lobby. The new MPV just went on sale yesterday and was on display. A Mazda bus arrived and took us through Mazda’s factory grounds to the Museum. Mazda owns a huge chunk of Hiroshima’s waterfront and the drive to the museum was fascinating. It was like a closed city with everyone driving Mazdas through all the factory buildings. At one point we passed by several giant parking lots full of new cars. One building was filled with hundreds of roadsters!! I was not allowed to take photos of the Mazda grounds. How cruel!!

The main floor of the museum was nothing special. In December, this is where they had the roadster exhibit which I missed! They had a nice marble white touring NC and a small shop selling some gifts.

This was the history room which had a very well illustrated timeline of the Mazda company and all the key cars they produced. The tour guide explained each car in detail but I was too busy taking photos to listen to everything she said.

The rotary engine is one of Mazda’s proudest achievements. This room explained everything you ever wanted to know about the rotary engine and had all the rotaries ever produced on display.

This room showed the entire car production process of an RX-8 from design to finish. Every part used to create an RX-8 was on display.

After that we went into the factory which was the best part of the tour. They build more than one type of car at a time so on the line there were roadsters, verisas, rx-8s all lined up. Watching all those roadsters getting built was just incredible. The robots recognize the type of car in front of them and do the appropriate work. Most of the assembly is done by humans though. They also build cars for overseas at the same time as cars for domestic sale, I noticed some LHD cars mixed in with RHD ones. I could not take any photos here as well. I sneaked a few but they didn’t turn out. But I do have some publicity photos of the assembly line: