Mazda is still its own company
It's true that Ford does own all those companies, but the way it works is different, more like what hudson said. Ford owns the larger portion of Mazda motor Corporation so they make the decision on products and projects Mazda will work on, but Mazda still makes lots of the products on its own. For instance the RX8 which will be coming out this year. Ford had made the decision to discontinue work on any rotary vehicle, and they canned the Rx8 project when it was just a concept. The "Mazda" engineers worked on the project on their spare time and came up with some interesting numbers and figures and made a Proposal to Ford(since they make the Decisions). FORD execs like what they saw and Gave the ok to proceed with the Project (speaking of Proceed, The B-Series Mazdas are know in Japan as The Mazda Proceed). Now the Rotary is Reborn. I could go on and on about all the relations between Ford and Mazda but I just wanted to let you people in on that.
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