Mazdaspeed is Mazda's in-house race and street car tuning arm. It began in 1968 as "Mazda Sports Corner", a tuning and racing operation run by Takayoshi Ohashi, who also ran Mazda's Tokyo distributor. They competed in numerous events at home and abroad, and they were also competitive at the 24 Hours of Le Mans races in the early 1980s with the 717, 727, and 737 before Mazda brought the group to Hiroshima in 1990. In 1991, Mazdaspeed's 787 won at Le Mans, a feat no other Japanese team has managed.

After the FIA effectively outlawed the Wankel engine the next year, the Mazdaspeed team turned away from professional racing and focused instead on enabling third-party competition of Mazda vehicles. Mazda assumed control of Mazdaspeed in 1999 as a tuning and performance parts operation within the company. In 2003, Mazda debuted its first consumer offered Mazdaspeed vehicle, the 2003 Mazdaspeed Protegé. It was only released to the North American market as an upgrade to the Protegé MP3 and it offered more power — from the MP3's to — by using a T25 Callaway-Garrett turbocharger and an intercooler. It is also worth noting that a 2003.5 model year was produced with a new range of colours and a new, more stylish exterior. Some modifications included new front air dam and a new spoiler. A year after, in 2004, another Mazdaspeed model was offered, the Mazdaspeed MX-5 Miata; it too was released only in the North American market. It featured an IHI single-scroll turbocharger producing 8.5 psi of boost to further increase power, from to and torque from to . Mazda soon realized that these high performance models could be successful outside of North America and would make the next vehicles available worldwide.

In 2006 the Mazdaspeed 6 was released globally; it featured the most powerful piston engine ever produced by Mazda at and all-wheel drive. For the first time Mazda didn't cease production of a Mazdaspeed vehicle after its first year of production, as it had with the Mazdaspeed Protegé and Mazdaspeed MX-5 Miata. A 2007 Mazdaspeed 6 model joined a new vehicle, the Mazdaspeed 3 — which, with and of torque, was the most powerful vehicle in its class.