wow! i mean, wow! the rear looks horrible, but the front is a hit, just like their last concepts.

UGLY!!

now i could only see it as a reversed prowler.

is it a car or UFO

I’d rather drive a flying toaster….

It looks like it’s melting already.

That car will be a hit!! Only if they redisgn the rear.

Rotary = massive problems. I like the design, but the rotary engine’s gotta go if they want this car to be successful.

Wow did someone get the name of the moron who designed that!

stupid name

1c3d0g: you can continue to believe that FUD if you’d like, but it’s still FUD. Rotary != massive problems. Yes, it isn’t as hassle-free as a piston engine, but you know that going into it. Rotaries aren’t for lazy Americans who can’t be bothered to maintain a proper oil level, that’s for sure.

In racing (Speed World Challenge type stuff) The rotary engines last 4x as long (200 hours vs around 50) as Porsche engines. Whether that means something good about the rotary engine or something horrible about Porsche engines, I’m not exactly sure.

For those who just want to put it off as ugly, it’s not like this is a ready for production model. It’s a design exercise, exploring a design theme never seen before. I’m so sorry that Mazda pushes the styling envelope and you can’t cope with that. As a follower of traditional Japanese design, I gotta say I like what I see. It’s beautiful! I wouldn’t drive it, but if styling cues from in front of the b-pillars would make it to production Mazdas that would be great. It’s a beautifully unified design, that’s for sure. Not like the gross Mazda3 hatch that took a page from about a hundred different design concepts and slapped them all together to make a grotesque, obese-looking automobile.

The back is horrid, as for the front - I hope it makes it onto mazda’s in the [distant] future.

kansei, just a reminder WE did test a nuke on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as lazy as we are. And it is American fighters that keep Japan free of North Korea n missiles or Red China invasion.

I am a big Mazda fan, but I have to admit that their concept cars are very bizarre and sometimes hideous (this concept being a prime example). If these design exercises are necessary to keep the designers fresh enough to keep turning out slick looking production vehicles, then I guess it’s worth it. Mazda has one of the best looking lineups (excluding the Tribute and B Series pickup) in the auto market today.

Sorry Kansei that car started off good but the back end is ugly. I’m not convinced that the covered rear wheels is not a throwback to 50’s, 60’s designs. It looks like an old Buck Rogers design from the 20’s

Further the rotary engine is a very impractical and troublesome engine. There are too many issues with owning them than their piston counterparts. The rotary may last for 200 races but it doesn’t win any of those races without some serious rules fudging. Put a rotary up against a flat, inline or V piston engine and the latter three will produce more torque, have less maintenance issues and be easier to fix. The rotary is a niche engine that only finds favor with the unique few who like its idiosyncracies. Not many people ‘getting it’ doesn’t make it a superior engine design.

i really like it!

it’s new, different, and elegant.

I am a big Mazda fan, but I have to admit that their concept cars are very bizarre and sometimes hideous (this concept being a prime example). If these design exercises are necessary to keep the designers fresh enough to keep turning out slick looking production vehicles, then I guess it’s worth it. Mazda has one of the best looking lineups (excluding the Tribute and B Series pickup) in the auto market today.
Comment by Cire, posted on October2 at 9:45 am

I think this hits it on the head right here. Considering the designers claimed inspiration I think they did an excellent job. If you stick to the status quo you get ordinary looking cars. How far out of the box was Chevy thinking when they designed the 3rd generation Corvette? That’s an automobile that has some very interesting lines and is still one of the most recognizable cars on the road.

Let’s boil this down to what it really is: a concept. It will never become road legal as is for a few simple reasons. It doesn’t have any headlights/taillights/sidemarkers, and there’s nowhere to mount license plates without completely screwing up the body lines.

I think this is very odd at first look, but on close examination the front end screams out that it’s the true evolution of the 3rd gen RX-7 (also a beautiful car). It’s not that I don’t like the RX-8, but the 7 was just so much more pure.

On a side note, I wonder what the coefficient of drag is on this thing?

I would rather hang myself than drive that POS!

Wierd.

Thats crazy but its awesome, Mazda has some slick designs up their sleeve, I wouldnt be surprised if the next gen RX looks somewhat similar to this. I’m curious about their upcoming rotary engine. I heard from a fellow Mazda source its going to be a 1.6L 2 rotor, and its supposedly more efficient than the Renesis and should be able to run on hydrogen, which of course would be hybrid.

Don’t comment on the looks, because you’ll never be offered anything looking remotely like this.

We can only comment on the looks as the practicality of having no rear suspension is ridiculous.

Jazz, please remove your head from your nether region and smell something other than, well… you know. I’ve owned 2 RX-7’s, both of them 1st gen’s. Back when they weren’t as realiable or as powerful as modern rotary engines. THEY ARE BULLETPROOF if you do what Kansei suggests, and keep the oil at the proper level.

The transmission is where I found fault, and the low gas mileage. But that was over 20 years ago, both have been improved.

Give me a 3rd Gen RX-7 and put it up against a current V8 Mustang (at least 10 years of development difference), and I’ll show you what a Mustang owner looks like when he cries. No need to fudge rules here. The RX-7 will whallop the ’stang on any type of track. You can even take half the spark plugs outta the RX-7, and it’ll still win.

I rather like the car as a whole, aside from practicality issues. The shape is quite interesting without being totally alienating. Again the rear section; covering the rear wheels it a definite No-no.

The lifted rear, contrasted against the low lying front makes the car look like it is flying. Indeed the whole car looks like it can fly. Considering that the rear wheel fairings seem like wings. They still look weird, even awful.

This is a very daring design from Mazda and everything you’d imagine a modern concept car, not merely a “pre-production prototype”, could look like in the 21st century.

Kansei,
The Rotary engine, as applied by MAZDA, is a very interesting engine, but it’s drawbacks outweigh its advantages, which are slim and few. Americans are NOT the only ones that feel this way or else the Rotary would be in more cars, in more countries, around the world. Americans are not the only ones who are not as impressed by the Rotary as you seem to be. Europeans and even the Japanese are not as hip to this engine. MAZDA just has not made its case well and, as a result, no one else cares that much about it to try it form themselves. (Porsche could stand to try this engine.)

It is an engine that could stand to be further researched and developed without regard to its “small-ness”. In the 1970s, GM experimented with rotary engines as an alternative to V8s in the Corvette. They went as far as four rotors. Unfortunately those projects suffered from the economic woes at the time. The gas crunch and Government pressure to build more fuel efficient cars, pretty much killed a GM Rotary engine.

Today there is a renewed interest in alternative engine designs, but the Rotary engine is not high on this list as Diesel gains headway. Audi fielding a dominating Diesel-powered race car, Opel developing Diesel-powered sports cars that can reach 155MPH while also able to return a best F/econ of over 100Mpg at highway speeds. Deusenberg is planning to roll out, if only a prototype or concept, a car using a CEM, Cylindrical Energy Module (Sounds so-”Star Trek”), that can make 300hp and 70MPG. The “Star Rotor” engine, that could be the ready successor to the Wankel or Renesis Rotary engines, producing as much power with two to three times the F/econ, is also in testing.

I think the Rotary engine is NOT being well served being in the sole parlance of one automaker, and being treated with such soft “kid gloves”, limiting it to only two rotors in only one small car. MAZDA was more daring with the Cosmo/Eunos, a Tri-rotor engine. FORD might have a firm hold on MAZDA’s shoulder but that is no excuse not to ramp up development of Rotary engines in such a way as to really grab attention. FORD might see use for such an engine in other cars, if MAZDA would make the case for it.

Rotaries? You kidding me, those things will last forever. They just keep going around and around and around, so smooth.. thats whats so awesome about them, and they’re great for racing, here’s a good example http://youtube.com/watch?v=faXldpWlGtg&mode=related&search=

If Steve Irwin was still alive, I have a feeling he’d drive one!

Belongs in the movies, keep it off the road

did a fat person sat on the center of the rear when the sheet metal was still hot?

Sigh…there’s just no convincing people. OK, keep your beloved rotary engine. Sooner or later you WILL realize how troublesome the engine is. When you come crawling back to me I’ll simply say: told ya so!

///m,

That was a nice video. But it doesn’t really prove superiority. The Porsche had old tires and it caught debris, and lost step for it. That said, I have never had a doubt in my mind that the Rotary engine is a strong racing engine. It did excitingly well against such finely honed machines. But it is still not well represented.

But maintenance is still a major factor against the Rotary engine. the vast majority of people are “set it and forget it” types. They do NOT want to have to pay so much attention to a car. The fact that even a perfect Rotary engine burns a lot of oil is major point of contention for this engine type. Lawnmowers burn less oil.

Still this simply says more than just MAZDA needs to get their best brains on this engine. If they can keep the engine from burning oil, then 90% of it’s problems are fixed right there.

I like the rotary engine, but it still not a very well developed engine.

Someone forgot to put the solar panel on top of the Mazda! UGLY! Guess those large panels over the rear wheels function as brakes! Take that, Brembo!

Looks like the love-child of the RX-8 and H.R. Gieger’s Alien

Nice concept, but it won’t make it to market like that. Definitely not with that rear end. But that’s what concepts are for, right? An exercise in design.

I understand that it isn’t easy on the eye (at least at first like so much in car styling) but as somebody working in the fuel economy field I think it’s important to understand that the aerodynamic drag of the vehicle is about the only major areas left that hasn’t got a serious development exercise or trend towards improving.

Currently mass, rolling resistance, powertrain peak and cross-map efficiency, kinetic energy management (ie. regen braking) and energy storage are all areas of major activity. Aero drag is often cited as not being worth much, but this is mainly because substantial changes in CD aren’t easily delivered given basic vehicle form. Shifting towards these keel bodies with low base drag (the effective size of the tail) is a major improvement and can deliver perhaps a halving or CD. The other often overlooked benefit is that reducing aero losses helps to increase the amount of energy available for regenerative braking. A halving of CD can reduce fuel consumption of even a prius by around 20% without requiring crazy system capabilities - a very substantial improvement.

So I wouldn’t write the ugly tail off too quick, it can be quite attractive depending on your viewpoint…

front end = yes, back = no. It will never get into production like this so I’ll never have to worry about laughing at one on the street.