Amati

Amati was a luxury car brand that Mazda announced in August 1991 and cancelled before it ever sold a car. It grew out of Project Pegasus, a 1988 study at Mazda North American Operations in Irvine, California, which became the Amati division in 1989 with executive Dick Colliver in charge. The aim was to compete with Acura, Infiniti and Lexus, with sales planned for spring 1994 through Mazda's existing dealerships. Retrospective reports describe an Amati 300 adapted from the Eunos 500, an Amati 500 that reached production as the Eunos 800 and a flagship Amati 1000 that was never shown publicly. When the Japanese economy collapsed in early 1992 Mazda ran short of cash and could not finish developing the brand, and in October 1992 it announced the cancellation; the finished vehicles were sold under Mazda's existing brand names.