Originally formed as a cork board making company in 1920, Toyo Kogyo Company branched out into making a variety of other products after a fire caused serious damage to its production facilities. In the 1930s, the company began producing three-wheel trucks, and continued to make them for several decades. In 1960, Toyo Kogyo unveiled its first passenger car, marketing the new vehicle under the Mazda name it had previously used for its trucks.
Mazda the carmaker was born, and has since expanded from its modest beginnings into a globally renowned name. In 2024, Mazda sold 1.2 million vehicles globally.
Over the decades, Mazda has produced many iconic cars , but there have inevitably been other models that have been forgotten about by most enthusiasts. Some of those forgotten models are particularly rare to find today, either because most examples were sent to the scrapyard years ago or because very few examples were produced in the first place. These 12 are among the very rarest.
Today, Mazda makes a range of SUVs, from the entry-level CX-30 crossover to the excellent three-row CX-90 . However, its first entry into the SUV world was a strange one, and little is known about it. The Pathfinder XV-1 was built specifically for the Burmese market, with production reportedly beginning in either 1972 or 1973.
Burma, today known as Myanmar, was an isolated country at the time, and its automobile production was controlled entirely by the state. The Pathfinder XV-1 was made available only .
