[Masamichi Kogai, Representative Director and President and CEO]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming to attend the launch of the all-new Roadster despite your busy schedules. The fourth generation Mazda Roadster will go on sale tomorrow at Mazda dealerships across Japan.
Since we shared the moment of the design unveiling with fans in Japan, Europe and the USA last September, we have kept you waiting for a very long time. The model has already attracted over 3,000 pre-orders, so let me express our deepest gratitude to all those customers. All of us at Mazda have been working hard to put the finishing touches on the car and deliver it to customers as soon as possible.

First of all, let me touch upon the history of Mazda Roadster.
Lightweight sports cars like the Roadster made "fun-to-drive" accessible to the general public and were very popular during the 1950s and '60s. However, these cars were unable to comply with increasingly strict environmental and safety regulations, and their popularity faded, leading to their extinction in the 1970s.

However, at Mazda we found ways to breakthrough these technical obstacles and revived the lightweight sports car. What we created was the first generation Roadster, the Eunos Roadster, which debuted in 1989.

Immediately after sales started, the car began receiving high praise for its affordable price, exhilarating open-top feel and the Jinba-ittai driving fun which has today become a symbol of the Mazda brand. It went on to become a hit that exceeded all of our expectations.

Amid the popularity, we made the decision to build the car at Hofu Plant for a time, in addition to regular production at Hiroshima Plant near the headquarters because we did not want to make our customers wait. At that time, I was a production engineer at Hofu Plant, and I suddenly became very busy modifying the production line there to accommodate the additional Roadster production.

It is often said that the success of the Mazda Roadster led to the revival and creation of a variety of different open-top sports cars globally, which is a particular point of pride for us.

Since then, Japan's bubble economy collapsed in the 1990s, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008 and the value of the yen sky-rocketed. Mazda has many times been exposed to crises that pushed the company toward the verge of collapse. Despite having experienced such harsh times, we were able to keep producing successive generations of the Mazda Roadster for over a quarter century. This is simply because we have so many fans all over the world, and that fact gave us great moral support. Thanks to that support, the car has grown into what it is today; an icon that represents the Mazda brand. Once again, I would like to express my gratitude to all those fans.

Speaking of the Mazda brand, our aim now is to get closer to our customers and enrich their lives through a variety of touch points. By providing driving pleasure and satisfied smiles, we want to make a particular kind of connection with our customers and become a one-and-only brand that they will choose again and again.

Written in the catalog made for the original model were the words, 'A car that will make anyone happy.' Looking at that phrase now, I strongly feel that these words were pointing the way, not just for the Roadster, but for the entire Mazda brand.

Now, we are about to start sales of the fourth generation Mazda Roadster, which incorporates the same SKYACTIV technologies and KODO design as our other new-generation models, I am certain that this is both a model to complete our global lineup, and a model that will make anyone happy, just like the original. Moving forward, we plan to raise Mazda's brand value to new level and increase sales volume over the medium- to long-term by delivering driving pleasure and satisfied smiles to our customers.

Thank you.