Back in the ‘90s, Mazda had a plan to take the global luxury market with a line of cars bigger, nicer, and more powerful than what they had built before. To sell them, they called on Sean Connery.
The Mazhda Shentia– sorry, Sentia–was a 5 Series-sized V6-powered rear-wheel-drive sedan that was meant to find a place in the lineup of Amati, Mazda’s stillborn challenger to Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti.
Though that ambitious project, with its rotary-powered GT cars and its V12-powered Amati 1000 luxury sedan, never came to be, the mid-sized cars like this one did make it to the market. They even made it to America as well as the 929.
What didn’t make it to America was the Sentia or this commercial featuring Sean Connery. You might know that many stars spent time doing ads abroad in markets like Japan, where they could earn another paycheck without the risk of “cheapening” their brand in their primary film and television markets. It’s a lot of fun to see them out there hawking products like coffee or beer, something they’d never do back home.
Though the Sentia certainly was a relatively attractive and capable option in the mid-sized luxury sedan market, I’m not really sure that it was as “Shtriking” as Connery claimed.