Turn 10 Car of the Week: Mazda Furai Concept
By J. Mason
Well now, it appears that not every one of
our Car of the Week readers agreed with my discourse on the Lotus
Elise/Exige inbreeding, and that’s perfectly alright. In fact, I’m
happy to see a little angst, some piss and vinegar thrown down from the
reading public – it shows you’re alive out there. Like most car geeks
you’re allowed -- nay, required -- to be opinionated. Yes, variety is the
spice of life and like I said in the article, I still think the Elise
and Exige are fantastic cars; I believe we can all agree on that point,
but it’s silly to have so many versions of one car model.
Oh well, I guess
James May
and I will be on one side of the fence, and all the people who want a
bajillion versions of each car model will be on the other. Can’t win
them all, eh Captain Slow?
And now, on to the meat!
I like things that rotate. When visiting the
Space Needle
in Seattle, I think facing Ballard when I sit down to eat and then
finishing my meal staring down Capitol Hill is insanely cool. I like tacky "As
Seen On TV" rotating tie racks. I’m a huge fan of rotisserie chicken and
those conveyor belts at swank sushi restaurants. And I’m a
card-carrying member of the Church of Mazda Rotary Engines. Without a
doubt, the FD RX-7 is one of my all-time favorite cars, and the 13B-REW
is a remarkable engine. When you consider that the four-rotor Mazda
787B won the 1991 24 Hours of Le Mans in its FIRST ATTEMPT, it makes it
tough to argue against the capability of the rotary. And now Mazda has
pushed the point even further with the Mazda Furai concept.
The Mazda Furai is one of a handful of Mazda
concepts based on a design language called Nagare, or “flow” in
Japanese -- a word that conveys all things moving in one direction.
Designed to evoke that feeling of movement, and named for “the sound of
the wind”, the lines of the car are absolutely stunning. Even while
standing still, the concept is at once beautiful and terrifying; the
car truly blends the line between art and function. It’s a sinister and
evil looking machine; something imagined by H.R. Giger or pulled from
the mind of Clive Barker. Yet the design of the car is so outside of
the usual car show concept norm that you can’t help but stare in awe and ponder its internals: Using the Courage LMP chassis and
housing an ethanol powered 450-horsepower RENESIS-based R20B
three-rotor engine, the Furai is quite possibly the ultimate Mazda.
While the Furai will probably never see
production, it’s clearly far from your garden variety, fake-exhaust,
rolled out of a trailer and assembled on the showroom floor concept.
Officially debuted at the 2008 Detroit auto show, the Furai is built
around a carbon-fiber Courage C65 Le Mans Prototype chassis that
MAZDASPEED and
B-K Motorsports
campaigned in the 2005-2006 American Le Mans Series. Yes they’ve
chucked the mechanicals and sensors into the back to make room for a
passenger seat, but for GOD SAKE it’s built from a race car!
But taking a car body and super gluing it to
race car underwear wasn’t enough for Mazda. Nope. Next they stopped
off at the plastic surgeon where the carbon tub and the original
Mazda-designed body were massaged and tweaked and enhanced using
Computational Fluid Dynamics data. The result: the team was able to
optimize aerodynamic performance by reducing lift and drag, while
increasing high-speed stability through judicious use of downforce.
WIN! Add in an ethanol powered 450-horsepower RENESIS-based R20B
three-rotor engine and you’re bringing quite the capable package to the
party.
The goal for the entire Furai concept was to
build a street-legal concept that would sit somewhere between a
supercar and a pure race car. Clearly Mazda had its sights set on cars
like the Ferrari F430, Honda NSX-R and the Nissan Skyline, all of which
have street and race versions available to the highest bidder. Knowing
where they set the bar, and given the pedigree of the race car and the
extensive international race heritage of Mazda, you just know this
thing is no joke. It’s a fully functioning, rip your head off, kick you
in the junk, aggressive beast of a car. In this author’s not so humble
opinion, the Mazda Furai concept is quite possibly the best Mazda ever
created.
Don’t believe me?
Watch the video. You may join the Church of Rotary too.
J.Mason has never met a whiskey he didn’t like. Tequila on the other hand, has proven to be no friend whatsoever.