Mazda Furai: a futuristic race car that was built in honour of the rotary-engine.

When you think of Mazda, you probably think about rotary engines. And when you think about rotary engines, then you probably think about fire-breathing RX-7’s or the 1991 Le Mans-winning 787B. To honour its international motorsports heritage and to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the rotary engine, Mazda came up with a very extreme concept car; the Mazda Furai. A car named after the sound of the wind.

On the 27nd of December 2007, the Furai was revealed at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). Mazda also launched the revised 2009 RX-8, but the Furai gained most of the media attention.

Mazda used its NAGARE (translated: flow) design language to design the Furai, but it was taken a step further as it was translated into a car based on an American Le Mans Series (ALMS) prototype racing car. The chassis was taken from Oreca’s 2004 Courage Competition C65 Le Mans prototype. The car was powered by a new generation 20B three-rotor wankel engine which was developed and built by the renowned tuner Racing Beat. Having the engine powered by E100 ethanol (100% ethanol) fuel was very special and resulted into an engine with a power output of 450 hp. This E100 fuel was, with an eye towards the future and the environment, specially developed by the oil company BP and Mazda.
A power output of 450 hp doesn’t seem very much for a race car, but a curb weight of only 675 kilograms, resulted in a really fast car. The Furai was even lighter than the 2016-spec Formula 1 cars. The low weight combined with the powerful rotary-engine resulted in a power-to-weight ratio of 0.66, which is approximately three times better than a Bugatti Veyron. The car had a top speed of only 290 kmh, but an impressive 0-100 kmh time of about 3 seconds.
In addition to using many parts from motor racing, Mazda also developed parts together with big brands from the sport:

• The 14-spoke aluminium centerlock wheels were from BBS.
• The seatbelts came from Sparco.
• Mazda and Kumho developed special tailor-made tyres.
• Castrol supplied the high-performance lubricants.
• The shock and spring package was made by a partnership between Sachs an Eibach.
• A 6-speed semi-automatic gearbox was developed by X-trac.
• Etcetera etcetera….

The Furai’s body was not only designed very aerodynamic, it was also designed very futuristic and completely in the spirit of the NAGARE design language. A big rear spoiler, a splitter and a diffusor were fitted to create massive amounts of downforce. Despite creating loads of downforce, the car still had a very low drag coefficient and thus was the car very fast in corners and on straights.

The Furai was a real race car, but Laurens van den Acker, Mazda’s head designer, had stated in an interview with Top Gear Magazine in 2008 that he strongly hoped that the car could be brought to the market. Franz von Holzhausen, Mazda’s North American director of design said, “Furai purposely blurs boundaries that have traditionally distinguished street cars from track cars. Historically, there has been a gap between single-purpose race cars and street-legal models, commonly called supercars, which emulate the real racers on the road. Furai bridges that gap like no car has ever done before.” A few high-placed men dreamed of a Mazda Furai supercar, unfortunately, it never came… Mazda said that the Furai would only be used as a rolling testbed for design and aerodynamic alterations.

So it never came and it probably will never come to a production version as well.

Many concept cars would have been exhibited in a museum or in a private collection. The Furai will not ever do so, unfortunately. In September 2013, it was announced that the only Mazda Furai concept car had caught fire and burnt down almost completely during a photography session by Top Gear. There were some remains of the car, but the location of where they are is still unknown…

Specs:

• A 450 hp three-rotor wankel engine which runs on special E100 fuel.
• A 6-speed semi-automatic X-trac gearbox.
• A curb weight of 675 kilograms.
• A top speed of 290 kmh.
• An 0-100 kmh time of about 3 seconds.
• A power-to-weight ratio of 0.66.
• A 2004-spec Courage C65 chassis.