They're over the moon at Mazda these days. Or maybe we should say "sun" because in Rising Sun land, Mazda is making record profits from a smart product line that began with the upmarket 6 family car and continued with the medium small 3 and the RX-8 sports model whose revolutionary rotary engine once seemed doomed to failure.
Last week in Japan the motoring press from three continents were assailed with billions of yen statistics in the company's largest-ever media programme. We heard that full year operating profit this year is going to be 78 billion yen, it being up 53 per cent for the first half.
It sounds impressive until you realise that Toyota, the Goliath of the Japanese - and indeed world - automotive scene is set to achieve 10 times that figure.
For Mazda, though, the good news should get even better because there are more new lines to come: 16 by the end of 2006. A handful were on the "Mazda 2005 and beyond" menu programme for our delectation.
First up was the high performance all-wheel-drive 6MPS that's set to boost the standard 6's image in mid-life, followed by the 5 MPV. Both were unveiled at the recent Paris auto show. More profound but proscribed by embargo were two models that will debut at the Detroit show in January, and the Geneva show in March. Those of us who know what's coming, and when, will not be surprised to hear that one is the MX-5 sports car. That's due at Geneva.
Detroit, meanwhile, will be entertained with the MX Crossport, described as a new type of crossover SUV with the bearing of a sports car. Mazda people were saying Detroit would be a reaction test bed but a decision to build has been made already with production probably starting in 2006.
All this build-up for a greater Mazda presence worldwide is happening at the company's base in Hiroshima, western Japan, 500 miles along the tracks from Tokyo.
The provincial isolation isn't really too bad: three kinds of Shinkansen, or bullet train, including the super fast 200 mph Nozumi, ply the route with the same sort of frequency as Dublin's DART and with impeccable timekeeping too!
Politely, the four-letter F word isn't mentioned in the Hiroshima base. Ford controls Mazda these days, but the only telltale signs are European or American executives who represent Henry and the Detroit world headquarters in this faraway outpost.
They include Stephen Odell, an Englishman who is global sales and marketing boss of the Mazda Corporation, and Moray Callum, a Scot with overall responsibility for design. (His brother, Ian fulfils a similar role at Jaguar).
Odell believes Europe could still do better for Mazda, one reason why a policy has been adopted of taking over all or most of the European private importers, including Ireland. (Mazda exercises direct control here in Ireland from 2006). "We have a 1.6 per cent share of the European market and it isn't enough. The customers have now put exterior styling in the number two position, after value-for-money, so we must listen to that."
The "listening" is actually done through three design centres, in Japan, Germany and California.
Back to the cars. The only driving experience was of the 6 MPS which will be known as the MazdaSpeed 6 in the US. (Speed isn't apparently allowed in European car names). Six laps on a financially-troubled circuit built for Formula One, but little used, predictably indicated the potency of the MPS. The direct-injection turbocharged 2.3 litre engine developing around 260bhp is mated with an active torque split all-wheel-drive system that should mean getting from zero to 100km/ h (or 62mph) in about 6.5 seconds.
We remember it for lively engine response and great steering feel or feedback through the bends. As with all cars great and small, there's plenty of low to mid-range torque and in the case of the MPS, that means exhilarating briskness at medium and lower speeds. Some of us lamented not being able to drive on Japanese normal roads. It would have surely have been a risky venture: the top speed limit is 80km/ h, or 50mph, and that's on motorways!
Think Japanese all-wheel-drive machinery, and flamboyant Subarus and Mitsubishis like the Evo come to mind. The 6MPS is very much the antithesis of this in-your-face sort of statement.
You know by its looks that it's different from the conventional 6, but all the racy bits like the aerodynamic rear bumper are neatly integrated into the design. According to programme manager Seichi Ohmoto, "we eliminated all traces where high performance is overstated: it's driving excitement with mature refinement."
We should see MPS in mid-summer of 2005.
Mazda's 5, that we didn't drive, comes with six seats that are all independent in three rows with walk-through convenience. At a time when every kind of MPV seems to have found innovative ways of changing and moving the furniture around, the 5 still manages to be clever and different. There can even be a seventh seat, folding out from beneath the cushion of the left-hand second row seat.
Mazda5, here by the spring, will come with 1.8 and 2.0 litre petrol engine and a 2.0 litre turbodiesel. By that time, too, we should be getting into zoom-zoom mood for probably Mazda's most enduring car, the MX-5 which has been the best-selling sports car ever with sales of over 700,000 since 1989.