Mazda celebrated at the Goodwood Festival of Speed

Anthony Crawford, CARADVICE.COM.AU
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Goodwood Festival of Speed Central Feature 4 In recognition of Mazda’s racing heritage, a spectacular 40-metre sculpture featuring two racing cars, took the top spot at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Inspired by Mazda’s Kodo design philosophy, as well as Danese Milano’s elegantly curved Ameland paper knife designed by Enzo Mari, Jerry Judah’s interpretation of Kodo combines 418 steel beams, each a different length and angle – thereby hanging the two cars over the Goodwood crowds.

The structure itself used 120 tonnes of steel, that put end to end, would stretch the entire length of the Goodwood Hill Climb track, and is arguably the most unique centrepiece yet to grace these hallowed grounds.

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For the last 18 years, Judah has been producing a sculpture for the ‘Celebrated Marque’ at Goodwood, though he rates this year’s effort for Mazda as one of the most challenging.

“The one thing you never do with steel is to twist it, so this year we had an impossible challenge to find a way of corkscrewing the entire structure," he said. Mazda’s motorsport history began in the late 1960s, as a way of proving and promoting its rotary engine technology in endurance racing.

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In 1991, Mazda recorded one its greatest victories – winning the 24 hours of Le Mans. Other triumphs at the prestigious French endurance race included five class wins. There are two British Touring Car titles, the SPA 24 Hours, a class win in the Daytona 24 Hours, and 100 IMSA races in the United States.

So it comes as no surprise that one of the two cars at the top of the sculpture was the winning 787B Le Mans prototype. The second show car was the Mazda LM55 Vision Grand Turismo – a design study created for Playstation’s Gran Turismo 6 racing simulation game, which the company called a window into Mazda’s future racing car design.

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It was also the first time that Goodwood had ever had a concept car on top of a sculpture. Mazda also celebrated the MX-5’s 25th birthday with the UK debut of an all-new generation version of the car, unveiled at Goodwood.

Read more about the new MX5 in Saturday's edition of Driven.

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