Mazda Furai

Spin Class

Until now, Mazda's Nagare line of concept cars have been fragile things hot-glued from star shine and fairy dust and powered by vaguely defined applications of trans-warp physics. Not so with Mazda's fifth draft of Nagare. The Furai (say "foo-rye") is named after a Japanese word describing the sound of wind, and this one howls.

Built on a carbonfibre Courage C65 tub donated by Mazda's 2005 American Le Mans Series LMP2 racer, and running a three-rotor R20B engine guzzling R100 ethanol and making 342kW, the fibreglass-bodied Furai is not your typical runway queen. It's also not representative of anything Mazda will race or build for production, the company emphasises, so don't look to hand anyone a deposit.

Invitations to 'drive' any motor-show concept, even the ones with functioning engines and working steering wheels, are generally low-speed rambles around parking lot cones on prototype tyres that have been hand-furrowed to resemble cheetah paws. Nervous techs chase behind on foot to pick up the shedding pieces as you attempt at 25km/h to draw conclusions about the car's dynamic tendencies.

For the Furai, Mazda needed a bit more run-off space. It invited journalists to the Laguna Seca circuit in northern California for an opportunity to drive the Furai. Except that shortly before the event, the invite was switched to a 'ride with a professional driver'. This caused grave disappointment, until it was explained that a pristine and wrinkle-free Furai would soon be needed on a motor show stage and there was no time to repair the car should media types wad it up. Knowing nods were exchanged, as it is a universal truth of press events run at tracks that no matter how mundane and pathetic the machinery being introduced, somebody will go off.

Designed and built in just six months, the Furai is easily dismissed as a sculpture of glam candy made convenient by the retiring of an old race-car chassis and the concurrent need for something - anything - new to put on the motor show circuit. The Furai's purpose is somewhat, er, nebulous. What a McLaren F1-facsimile decorated with seaweed fronds and sponsor logos says about Mazda's next MPV is anybody's guess, but at least the Furai looks hot.

Franz Von Holzhausen, the design director of Mazda North America known for his own matinee idol face, says the Furai pushes a number of buttons for Mazda. It celebrates the 40th anniversary of the rotary, promotes Mazda racing and the Mazdaspeed brand, highlights alternative fuel possibilities with the rotary, and it puts Nagare's singular surface language onto a moving vehicle to see what happens.

Finally.

Recall that Nagare is Mazda's 16-month-old design philosophy which incorporates, in Von Holzhausen terms, "acts of wind ... how nature expresses motion."

Until Furai, Mazda had issued four static concepts, including the original Nagare from the 2006 LA motor show, the Ryuga, the Hakaze, and the Taiki. All are characterised by their ripples, dimples and waves pressed into wind-stretched bodywork. And also by their swaying seaweed fronds. It's all very Zen and earthy and Gardens-of-Kyoto, especially the Taiki from last year's Tokyo show which also borrowed heavily from Buck Rogers.

"Every design organisation is searching for its soul within the design community," says Von Holzhausen. "We've established ours and it's credible and it's strong."

If there's a criticism, he acknowledges, it's that Nagare has been too styling oriented and esoteric for Mazda's motorhead fans. "We have to prove that it isn't just style, that it's also substance." With Furai, Mazda - and specifically Mazda North America, an outfit thick with motorheads and weekend racers - wanted to put its Nagare wind language into the, er, wind. Take it out for a stroll at 200km/h.

No actual wind tunnels were turned on in the making of the Furai. All the airflow work was performed on computer by Swift Engineering, the southern California designer and builder of Swift racing cars. Using computational fluid dynamics models, it was discovered that the intertwining side textures could be shaped to help guide air into the heat exchangers.

Swift added its own home-grown 'turbo tongue' or 'air fang', a roof-mounted intake ram, which, at speed, extends into denser air above the boundary layer. Originally developed during the turbo Indycar days and sculpted with a broad, flat, cup-like mouth, the 'fang' is shaped to induce twin vortices that suck and spiral air into the ram for better engine breathing.

The drag coefficient comes in at 0.36 without the rear wing, 0.5 with, however, there's been barely enough time to get the Furai running, much less worry about the aero set-up. The Swift boys say it does generate downforce, about 80 percent of the donor race car's and mainly at the back, but they can't be certain about the numbers owing to last-minute changes.

With aluminium housings and peripheral ports, the three-rotor R20B is virtually unchanged from its track battles of 2005. To make it fire on ethanol, which has roughly half the energy density of racing fuel, engine builder Jim Mederer of Racing Beat simply upsized the injector nozzles and added a second fuel pump to handle the extra volume. He dialled back the racing rev limiter to 8800rpm from over 9000rpm, mainly to add longevity. Gear selection is done sequentially through an Xtrac six-speed, unchanged from the racing season.

Cars running in ALMS are required to leave cockpit room for two seats, though it's not prohibited to design them for pygmies. About as snug as Serena Williams's shorts, the twin Siamesed seats in the Furai's cockpit are accessed by swinging one leg at a time over the vast bodywork so that you're standing up in the seat, then sliding down into the waiting five-point harness. Jennifer Hawkins would feel fat in this machine, even sitting next to Mazda pro ALMS driver Jamie Bach, something of a pygmy himself.

Owing to a deal worked out with surrounding communities, Laguna Seca has a precious few days in which it can run cars that break its 92-decibel sound limit. This was one of those days. Bach started the R20B, banged it into gear, and let fly. Acceleration out of the pits was eye flattening, accompanied by the piercing wail of the rotary, a sound so intense that it will, unless dampened by earplugs, completely decalcify your spinal cord.

For our 1.5 brief laps together, Bach was taking it easy, not depending too much on the unsorted and understeer-inducing aerodynamics for grip. Even so, the Furai tracked a corner with gobsmacking speed and pounced upon the next one with the dizzying quickness of video set on fast forward.

Later, watching the Furai circulate from afar, it was easy to imagine Mazda's next assault on Le Mans. Yes, it has been 17 years since the company won the French classic, and don't we all think the clock has pretty much run out on that particular brag? It's time Mazda did something new.

Furai! For real? We'll see.

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