I would think anywhere between $75K-$150K would be about right. MAZDA has neither the ego nor the inclination to build the Furai for $200k. But I will say this. It wouldn’t surprise me.

Appearances are the cheap part of any cars design. You can make them look like anything you want for any price point these days. Look at the Kia Amanti and you the Ferrari 360 Modena. One looks much more costly than it was and the other looks vastly cheaper than it was. Styling is hardly a predictor of price and it has not since the days of Chrome.

Carbon Fiber: too costly to even build with, too fragile. They look at the C5 and C6 CORVETTE and see a car that big, and it is physically huge for a sports car, and the Porsche 911 and see cars that car light, and tough, win races easily, and don’t cost as much as an apartment in New York… or Tokyo. It would likely be used only on the body and a mix of advanced materials used throughout. Also the weight savings from Carbon Fiber is not as great as it used to be thanks to more advanced methods of using Aluminum and lightweight alloys.

Even with totally original parts end-to-end, it is very possible to deliver this car at a price under $100K (roughly Porsche money). One would think a car like the Molser MT900 would cost $200K. The MT900S, doesn’t crack $190K while they start at and the car has always been relatively inexpensive compared to other supercars. The FORD GT stickered for $150K, speculation drove the price up to over $250K.

Price does not denote the status of “Super Car”, that is a function of performance (think Nissan’s GT-R – about $70 and one of the quickest and most agile cars around). That does not mean the Furai is NOT a Super car simply because it does not cost as much as or more than $200K.

Driven007, you may have that title confused with “Exotic” (as in rare). I have little doubt that Mazda would, if they did, build fewer that 1500 units a year most going to collectors and/or racing teams. Speculation would jump the price badly upward, especially if MAZDA let it slip that they were going to build only x number for n years and then no more, not even a follow-up just as FORD let happen. NO, FORD did not get that extra $100K per unit. The dealers did.

The Furai is a beautiful car, but it need not be “unobtainium”. I don’t see it being in MAZDA’s best interests nor fitting with their character, as a company known for making reasonably and responsibly priced performance and racing vehicles, to build a car that for sell that costs upwards of ten times their average.

snoboardguy21- I had only saw the “forward thinking” commercial a few minutes ago for the F-150 (I’m not sure if it’s exclusive to that one commercial). When Ford’s talking about the F-150, that’s relatively forward thinking; I say that mostly because it’s still extremely competitive against Chevrolet, Toyota, GM and Dodge, even after all the others had been redesigned atleast once or more. Otherwise, with the exception of the Edge, Fusion, Taurus (very nice car, most people just overlook it) and Mustang (which really set the benchmark for Chevrolet and Dodge, and still remains competitive after a few years), Ford of America is stuck in the past.

Last time I checked LP640 the Jap’s didn’t invent the assembly line. Also the Wankel rotary engine that Mazda uses (and I must say has vastly improved, although I’m still not a fan of them)was created by a German and was also developed and used before Mazda by Mercedes, Rolls Royce, Bristol Meyers and GM in the early 1970’s. One of the Corvette concepts even had a rotary engine (imagine that). Yes Mazda has improved the Rotary but I’d hardly call the Japanese leaders in innovation. If anything they improve existing technologies like they do pretty much with every technology out there.

An arms race? Maybe.

I think the Japanese are being more assertive, much like GM was when they decided to take the CORVETTE to the world stage. Whether it lasts beyond their shores is up to those companies. But “Innovation” is not necessarily the word I would use to describe their latest performance efforts.

In the 1960’s, a time I like to call “the Golden age of high performance automobiles” simply because every idea was a good idea and every idea was new, the only car that was a loser was the car that didn’t get built. But as the rules became more concrete and companies where more interested in getting big and/or famous more than better, the number of innovations declined and only refinement was pursued.

“You can only sharpen a sword so much before you start to burn down the blade.” Eventually you will have to make a new sword. I think the newest sports cars that have come along in the last decade or so are those new swords.

While many of these newest sports and super sports cars seem to more and more resemble race cars, they are not necessarily innovative, as that is what sports cars in the 1960s were: very close to the race cars that spawned the technology to begin with. We are just seeing that tech being used to a more pronounced degree.

It’s no big surprise if the Japanese, the king techno-philes of the world are doing it more that most.

The word I’d use is “Nostalgic” to denote that time when you built what you raced and you raced to win. This sudden surge may not last as it might well be a last horrah before the Japanese buckle down and start seriously working on making hybrid and electric race cars.

But if it has one lasting effect, it’ll be to light a fire under the butts of many of these companies and get Ray Sinclair’s “arms race” roaring in a way that hasn’t been seen in a couple of generations.

700hp would be overkill for a car from a company better known for tight course racing and not all out speed. But I wouldn’t mind seeing MAZDA try something like that.

Nowei,

What can I say. I think Mazda may want to build this as their high end, any-day, car. Something higher up the food chain than the RX-8 to give grief to the GT-R, the “NSX”, and LF-1 (when that one ships).

MAZDA’s got street cred and racing cred. This could be exactly the way to spend some of it.

After all the good work MAZDA has done for FORD, this would be a total worth it reward.

Sweet.

It makes a lot of sense when you consider Mazda advertises that “More Mazdas are raced than any other car”.

But man, this thing is amazing looking. I could have never imagined they could fuse the body lines so nicely with the rest of the car. This is really ambitious design and thinking- I’d love to see it in person.

Either way, I like those headlights. They are very NOT-bland which is a great thing for a Japanese car (..or American if that’s what you consider Mazda to be)