Mazda Announces Directors, Corporate Auditors and Executive Officers Changes

Hiroshima, Japan, Apr 28, 2005 - (JCN Newswire) - Mazda Motor Corporation today announced a number of executive changes. The changes were reviewed at the Mazda Board of Directors meeting on April 28, 2005 and announced concurrent to the company's positive fiscal 2004 results, which included a record operating profit of 82.9 billion yen (USD $773 million / Euro 597 million).

Subject to approval at the Mazda shareholder meeting scheduled for June 24, 2005, Daniel T. Morris will join Mazda's nine-person Board of Directors and will assume responsibility for the Marketing, Sales and Customer Service as a senior managing executive officer. Morris has been president and CEO of Mazda Motor Europe (MME) since May 2003. Prior to being named president and CEO of MME, he served as vice president, Sales. Dan Morris joined Mazda in July 2001.

Morris will replace Stephen Odell who will return to Ford Motor Company after a successful term of nearly five-and-a-half years with Mazda. Odell's new role at Ford Motor Company will be the subject of a separate announcement.

"While I will personally miss working daily with Stephen, I am satisfied with our transition plan and believe it will help us maintain our current momentum," said Hisakazu Imaki, president and CEO of Mazda Motor Corporation. "Dan Morris is very familiar with Mazda and the Mazda management team. He has been a global leader for a number of years now and I am sure he will be able to contribute at a high level working at Mazda headquarters in Hiroshima."

Mazda also confirmed today that it has promoted seven additional managers to the level of corporate executive officer in an effort to strengthen key areas of the business.

President Imaki noted, "In order for Mazda to maintain momentum, it is very important that we further empower key members of the Mazda team. For this reason, we have approved a number of new executive officers. These important promotions recognize the hard work of individual people and will help ensure key divisions are well supported by our best managers."

Lastly, as part of today's announcement, Mazda named two new corporate auditors. In doing so, Mazda has increased the number of outside auditors from two to three. Mazda has five corporate auditors in all.