Welcome to Autoxchange - Desirable Cars - Mazda Furai Sound of the wind



	DESIRABLE CARS


	Ok, here's a quiz question for all you so-called racing fans. Between Toyota, Honda and Nissan, which marque has the distinction of being the only Japanese manufacturer to have ever won the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race? What if I were to tell you that none of them have ever won Le Mans, and that distinction and honour actually belongs to Mazda? Yes, for all their collective might and racing pedigree, Mazda pulled the rug from under the feet of the Japanese Big Three! Mazda won Le Mans way back in 1991 with the 787B, uniquely powered by a rotary ‘Wankel’ engine. In fact, they’ve persevered with this technology for decades, and 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of Mazda's rotary engine. To mark the event, Mazda showcased the Furai concept at the North American auto show held at Detroit early in January. Now, Mazda have their own philosophy towards handling and performance – exemplified by their ‘Zoom-Zoom’ tag line. Accordingly, Mazda concept cars are built to NAGARE (na-gaa-rayh) design language, Nagare being a Japanese word that implies flow and embodiment of motion. Most concept cars are one-offs, usually far removed from reality – generally an exercise for a designer to express his or her free thought and will. Rarely do concept cars make it into production – the recent exception being the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizeone. Mazda's Nagare concepts though are functional in that the company definitely expresses its intent and design thought on future vehicles. According to the director of design at Mazda, Franz von Holzhausen, the idea is to bridge the gap between Mazda's road cars and those campaigned by Mazda Motorsports. The Furai is intended for just this purpose.



	What a car the Furai is! Under the skin is a real Le Mans racing chassis, a French Courage (coo-razh) C65. An LMP-2 (Le Mans prototype) racer in the ALMS (American Le Mans Series), it’s powered by Mazda's 450bhp Renesis R20B three-rotor rotary engine. The engine can run on E100 (100% ethyl alcohol) as well as E10. What’s really striking about the Furai is its exterior design, which is stunning – whether viewed from the front, rear or in profile. It's all about aerodynamics (Furai means sound of the wind) and the car is therefore a 300km/h rolling laboratory. Mazda teamed up with Swift Engineering for analyzing the Furai using Computational Fluid Dynamics, building on the relationship established while collaborating on the Mazda-Cosworth single-seaters used in the American Atlantic racing series. The result – headlamp trim pieces that act as guide frames that cancel aerodynamic lift, the air flow under the car at front is guided within the body to cool the radiators, and Nagare elements on the side surfaces feed air to cool the rear brakes, oil cooler and transmission cooler. The air is then eased out via an under-car diffuser from the rear.



	The Courage tub under the skin is unchanged, with the driver sitting on the right hand side. While in LMP-2 racing specification, the passenger seat area is taken up with electronics, in the Furai those have been relocated to render the passenger seat usable. Another difference is that the cockpit area is wider than normal in the C65 and doors with butterfly hinges make it easier to get in and out of the car. Since this is a concept car, there are no figures for performance. Nevertheless, knowing it has a 450bhp engine and racing chassis, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume leech-like grip and fantastic handling, not to mention 300km/h capability. It's a pity Mazda won’t be making the Furai available as a supercar, nor will it be seen on racing tracks at full chat either. Spoilsports! However, if this is the way Mazda car design is heading for the future, Mazda's forthcoming models could turn out to be very exciting indeed.