The new managing director of Mazda has held his first face-to-face talks with dealers within days of taking on the new role.

Rob Lindley became managing director of Mazda UK on August 1 and within two weeks was holding a talkback session with dealers as part of a regular meeting with his network.

He was joined by newly appointed sales director Jeremy Thompson, formerly Mazda’s marketing director, who also took up his new role on August 1 to replace Lindley.

The sessions are part of twice-yearly meetings with dealers, but represent an early opportunity for the management team to reinforce their partnership philosophy with dealers.

Lindley says: “It has to be a partnership. You can’t benefit at the expense of your dealers because it just can’t work that way. You have to be equal and work together.”

“It’s about honesty with dealers first and foremost. There are things that happen that they don’t like: for example, a fire at one of our plants three months ago that disrupted RX-8 production.

“We had to be honest with them and show how we were going to help them.”

Mazda has a total of 147 dealers, including a specialist fleet dealers network of 12 sites, together with six authorized repairers.