While Trump's tariffs have people getting ready for pricier Japanese cars, it's important to remember the extra charges only affect vehicles made outside the United States -- not Japanese cars built in the U.S. And many Japanese automakers build their vehicles in America.
So it can be good to have a cheat sheet for your shopping list that shows which cars are manufactured where, and today we're going to tackle Mazda. The Mazda Motor Corporation grew out of the wreckage of the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co.,
Ltd., which was founded in 1920 in Hiroshima to make products out of cork. After a fire essentially destroyed the cork business, Toyo Kogyo reorganized to make industrial machinery. That put it on a more typical path to automotive production that saw the debut of the Mazda-Go "tricycle truck" in 1931.
The first Mazda passenger car didn't come until 1960, but the company saw quick growth despite its late start in the industry. As a result, it opened its first assembly plant outside of Japan in Colombia in 1983 and its first in the United States in 1987. Today, only the Mazda CX-50 (with gas and hybrid powertrains) is made in the U.S. The Mazda3 and CX-30 are built in Mexico, though, so they could face lower tariffs than Japanese-made Mazdas. Mazda also has a plant in Thailand building the BT pickup and CX-3 primarily for Australia, and one in Vietnam that manufactures that country's Mazda2 models.
Read more: These Are The Cars You'd Buy If They Were $20,000 Cheaper
Mazda Models Made In The United States
The 2020s aren't the first time Japanese automakers have felt pressure to build more cars in the U.S. to avoid tariffs. It happened in the 1980s, too, when Mazda — along with Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Subaru, and even, for a while, Mitsubishi — began manufacturing cars here. The original Mazda plant was in Flat Rock, Michigan, where it produced the Mazda6 and its predecessors from 1987-2012.
Mazda sold the plant to its then-partner Ford at the time, but it restarted U.S. production 10 years later with some new help: The Mazda Toyota Manufacturing Plant in Huntsville, Ala., now makes the Mazda CX-50 and CX-50 Hybrid as well as the Toyota Corolla Cross and its hybrid sibling. We called the current CX-50 "about as good as midsized CUVs get," and the high-efficiency version borrows Toyota's hybrid tech to boost fuel economy by some 40% compared to the gas-only version.
It's not just Jalopnik praising the CX-50, either. Customers have been snapping them up at a brisk rate, with sales jumping nearly 83% in 2024. Things have slowed slightly this year, although the CX-50 was still ahead of last year's sales pace by 40.4% through July 2025, a month when its sales were up more than 71%.
Mazda Models Made In Mexico
Like many automakers, Mazda shifted some of its North American production to Mexico during the NAFTA days, opening Mazda de Mexico in Salamanca in 2014. The plant is still going strong, too, building the Mazda3 sedan/hatchback and Mazda CX-30 small SUV. The Mazda2 is made there as well, although Mazda only sold that subcompact in the U.S. from 2011 to 2014.
The sleek-looking Mazda3 compact — available in sedan and hatchback body styles — is a long-time Jalopnik favorite, and we consider it among the best cars for a new driver. After all, it's still priced below $30K, with the four-door starting at $24,150, the hatchback at $25,150, and a destination charge of $1,235 for both ($1,280 in Alaska). It's enough to get you an 8.8 info display (with console-mounted controller), a 7-inch driver display, Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, a free Wi-Fi trial, and plenty of advanced driver-assistance systems.
Built on the same platform as the Mazda3, the Mazda CX-30 naturally provides many of the same benefits in a slightly different shape. It's good news for packing your gear because the CX-30 has 20.2 cubic feet of rear storage with its back seats up and 45.2 cubic feet with the seatbacks folded. The CX-30 is also impressively affordable — opening at $25,195 with a $1,495 destination charge ($1,540 in Alaska) — and a great choice if you need a car that's cheap to insure.
Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox...
Read the original article on Jalopnik.
