We’re Still Sad About The Mazda Furai

Usually, when a manufacturer releases some kind of supercar or race car concept that’s designed to preview a new design direction, they’re quickly forgotten about other than for journalists to reference every time a new model is released for the next five years afterwards. Truthfully, we know they’ll never be built so why long for them?

We’ll accuse Mazda of doing just that actually, with the oft-forgot RX-Vision Concept of 2015. Mazda never said it was going to build it, we all knew it wouldn’t result in a direct road car and ultimately nobody really gives it a second thought these days.

On occasion though, one comes along that steals your heart. One that, despite knowing will never amount to more than a show car that may work for a few demo runs, will forever sit in your consciousness. Which brings us to the sad story of the Mazda Furai.

In 2008, Mazda revealed it would be bringing the Furai concept to the 2008 Detroit Motor Show. It came with the usual marketing fluff – on this occasion serving as another preview of the ‘Nagare’ design direction its road cars were heading in and, to quote a press release of the time, being an ‘embodiment of Zoom-Zoom’. Bit of sick.

Yet, something about the Furai immediately etched itself into our minds. It’s perhaps one of those things you can’t really explain, but it just happens.

Maybe it was that ‘Nagare’ design, the spaceship-like bodywork and sci-fi front lights that wowed us. Perhaps it was the fact that, under the skin, it was a bonafide race car, its chassis taken from a Courage C65 Le Mans Prototype.

Surely, the use of a 20B rotary at a time the Wankel was seemingly approaching its final days was partly to blame. Its punchy but realistic output of 450bhp maybe gave us some secret hope that Mazda was going to give the quirky engine one last hurrah.

We knew the Mazda Furai would never enter production, despite supposedly serving to blur the lines between road and race car. We knew it would never even go properly racing, despite some faint whispers of a potential outing at Le Mans.

Pick whatever reason you like though, and the Mazda Furai embedded itself into our hearts. Which made its ultimate fate only more saddening.

For a while, nobody really knew what happened to the Furai. It had started appearing in video games like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo, but the real thing was nowhere to be seen. Presumably, it had been tucked away into storage somewhere.

However, that was sadly not the case. In 2013, it was revealed that Top Gear Magazine had planned a feature with the concept shortly after its reveal. Sadly though, during that shoot, the engine bay caught fire – and ultimately the Furai would burn to a crisp.

It’s not known what happened to the charred remains, and only Mazda could ever really tell us. We’ve never lost hope for it to gloriously reemerge, although that has only dwindled as the years have gone on.

Maybe, with Mazda now exploring the rotary once again, there’s a chance once more.