Mazda Motor Corporation was founded in 1920 and officially began producing small vans in Hiroshima in 1931 and sedans in the early 1960s. In the 1990s, Mazda Motor Corporation always ranked just after Toyota and Nissan in Japan, and was one of the world's most famous Japanese car brands. Initially, the "m" in the Mazda logo was the first letter of the Matsuda phonetic alphabet, and the English phonetic "mazda" was used as its logo.