Mazda’s brand is kind of all over the place. When I think Mazda, I think either of suburban minivan drivers, Miata fans or mid-90s RX-7 racer-boys (like my annoying neighbors). But there’s some goodness to be found if you look.

Mazda has redesigned the logo several times, and even went without an official mark for almost two decades. My favorite Mazda logomark of recent years spans from 1992 to 1997, and was actually a hasty reworking of their just-unveiled 1991 mark (it’s a more rounded version; the ‘91 mark was immediately and justifiably compared to Renault’s):

Mazda toyed with the idea of a luxury brand, much like Toyota has Lexus, Honda has Acura, Nissan has Infiniti, etc. Set to be called “Amati,” the marque was killed off before it was born. The logo reminds me a little of Maybach:

Mazda’s current logo is a stylized “M,” which is kind of predictable. It also apparently represents wings in flight, and to some, a tulip — the picture of masculinity.

I kind of dig on the primitive look of their early logos — I see hints of the Miata logo here. And their color scheme from the mid-60s data booklet is super-pretty:

Their circle-m logo was used on and off through 1975, which I kind of dig, although it looks a little too much like an “h” has found its way in there:

Mazda has a performance division, Mazdaspeed, with an italicized, no-nonsense logotype and no mark. I prefer the Mazdaspeed type to the normal Mazda type. (The straight-up Mazda logo has always struck me as kind of squat and industrial, while Mazdaspeed is more assertive.)

I couldn’t see a Mazdaspeed logo on a minivan though (and Mazda makes one of the ugliest: the Mazda 5).

Getting back to the normal, non-zippy Mazda brand, the logotype’s disconnected “Z” gives the whole word a stenciled feel, and the casing is inconsistent: besides an ambiguously cased “Z,” every letter appears to be lowercase, with the exception of the uppercase “D” — makes me wonder if they just got lazy and didn’t feel like addressing the ascender:

I’d love to see Mazda refine their logotype a little; they haven’t changed it in years, even as the mark itself has evolved. Maybe it’s time to try something more fluid, to better complement their more rounded logomark.