I've just got back from The Goodwood Festival of Speed in England, where I was lucky enough to see the Mazda Furai up close and in action! The Festival is an annual event put on by the Earl of March, and attracts everything from 19th century steam cars to current F1 cars and stars like Lewis Hamilton driving last year's McLaren. All of them race their machines up a fast hillclimb course, and many put on burn out and donut shows as well. If that wasn't enough, they have a 2.5 km wooded rally course where guys like Pettr Solberg drive new and vintage Rally machines. When the cars aren't on track, you can wonder around the paddock and get up close to them. I think I saw every race and street car I have ever drooled over throughout my life. It truly is the coolest event I have ever been to and a must see for gear heads

Among the "Supercar" class (which included 3 Veyrons) Mazda brought the Furai. The car looks and sounds amazing, and has a much higher level of detail up close than I had expected. Seeing it blast up the hill was a real treat!

I took a ton of pics of the Furai (as well as everything else there) so I thought I'd share some with you fellow rotor heads. To keep things reasonable I've posted them in a relatively small size...

Enjoy!

 

And under the skin:

 

the one time i saw it up close was at the 2008 toronto auto show, and godamn it looked like the batmobile

 

Great pictures. Goodwood sits at the top of my "must do before I die" list.

I am encouraged to see that even Mazda build their 20Bs by stacking used 13B housings together....

 

I love the Furai!!

And yes, Goodwood is something I definitely want to see before I meet my maker.

The sound that thing makes must have been incredible!

 

that's awesome Nick! i am just jealous...i must go to that festival.

 

Wow. Thanks for sharing that. I say better than the batmobile.

 

Thanks, as they say, "See Goodwood and die."

 

Glad you guys like the pics - I have a ton from the weekend.

The event is seriously one of the coolest things going. If you like high performance and racing cars / bikes, I can't think of a better place to go. I mean, when you think back to all the significant race cars from your youth: Turbo 80's F1 cars, Group 'B' Rally machines, Porsche 917 - they are all there, and are often driven by the guys you watched back then!

Here's a website I found with about 250 pics from this year's event - it gives you an idea of what else was there. This is easier than posting a bunch of my pics! lol
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/gallery.php?num=12681


If you ever get the chance to go, you wont be disappointed.


Here's some more rotary content:

 

It's because you waste too much time at those festivals wearing multi-coloured shirts, and leather isn't it?

It's also nice to see Mazda's using the good old RX7 owners secret to hold it together... Zips ties.

Nice pics btw, what are you using for a Camera?

 

Mazda Furai is so so so nice, thanks!!

 

[QUOTE=Nismo Convert86;8387115]It's because you waste too much time at those festivals wearing multi-coloured shirts, and leather isn't it?
QUOTE]

how did you find out about that

(disclaimer: i am in no way associated with that kind of activity, not that there's anything wrong with that)

 

I thought Aaron liked fur suits more than leather.... but I guess I'm mistaken!


Believe it or not, the camera is a Nikon Coolpix S4 - simple point and shoot 6.0mp unit. The thing about it is that it's got a 10X optical zoom, which makes close-up shots way more possible - something all that much neater when you are already so close to the action at Goodwood:

 

Damn!..I see that car,and it Reminds me of the Alien VS Predator Movie!..(I'd laugh if the Driver was Ahnold..Shwazzen-egga!..from Kahli-PhonYa!)!

 

excellent stuff! Thanks for sharing!

 

Looks like the Furai has a multiple piece eccentric shaft, if that's what the oil feed into the thin intermediate plate is for...

 

Hey Neo,
Remeber these cars from Sevenstock?

 

Cool posts Nick! Still travelling I see. now STOP IT!

 

lol - yeah, this traveling thing has become somewhat of an affliction that is hard to support! I promise I wont travel to another event for at least a week or two. Although, without a US GP this year I can still rationalize the Festival trip as a replacement for that! At least that's what I'm telling my wife

 

MyRxBad,

Yep, I remember those puppies.
It's been so long since we've been to Cali. We should plan something for next year. I was hoping to attend this year at 7stock, unforutnatly a few things have come up I can't get out of.

Nick,

Just promise us you'll keep taking pics on your travels. Since the majority of us are poor and can't travel, might as well get to see some of the world through pics.

 

Deal. As long as I can keep taking advantage of family in the airline business, I'll use my vacation time wisely and take lots of pics! lol

 

I have wanted to do Goodwood for years now. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Another thing to consider before dying is a lap around the old Nurburgring in a performance car....almost have my wife talked into that one...

 

I just finished watching the lastest episode of Top Gear and the Furai was featured breifly.

Jeremy quoted it as " ...............It has a 1.9L Wankel with 460bHP..........and its broken! So we can't take it around our track".

 

I was reading this topic and enjoying it.......all of a sudden I realized that I was seeing cars that are now considered classics and only good for historic shows, that I saw when they were state of the art and new tech. For example the Furai is the Courage ALMS car from a couple of years ago with a new body and some new pieces.

The BF Goodrich car, I remember from the old IMSA Series when it was super high tech but never successful because it was running on street BFG's and it had no guts. Back in the old IMSA the car had to ultimately run in the Camel Lights Class as it was generally recognized that the rotary didn't have enough power or durability to run in the big car class.

I still remember all of the Argo's, the Tiga's, the Spices running BP 2 rotors in the Lites Class. It has always been difficult for the rotaries to run in the big boys class. The success that Mandeville had with the Kudzu was mostly due to reliability and not outright speed. Actually I still remember the first rotary U2L Can Am car I saw back in the early '80's. It was built by Sean Burgess. I think Sean still has the car in his shop..... Memories.......

 

I felt the same way a few times during the weekend. Looking at the Rally Cars, They had the "Giants of Modern Rallying" which included the "recent" WRC machines right next to the paddock for the Quattros, Stratos', Peugeots and RS200's all under the "Legendary Group B" moniker. It was also a bit of a double take to hear them talking about Paul Tracy driving his "Historic race winning 1993 Penske". All I could think was "What do you mean Historic? I was at that race!" lol

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't that T616 basically developed as a testbed for BF Goodrich road tires?