This insane tribute to Mazda’s racing history will make you dizzy

This year’s tribute at the Goodwood Festival of Speed is Mazda, a tower of steel topped with the greatest and latest Mazda racing cars.

In case you’re not familiar, The Goodwood Festival of Speed is an annual conference of horsepower junkies, somewhere in the West Sussex region of England. Every year some of the most powerful machines ever conceived challenge each other to see who’s fastest up the legendary Hill Climb course, along with gathering to gab together about how awesome it is to be super fast and destroy tires. It’s a pretty ostentatious display of wealth paired incredible engineering, and who doesn’t love those things?

At the centre of each festival stands the GLORIOUS GOODWOOD HOUSE CENTRAL DISPLAY. Gerry Judah’s annual tribute to the racing and performance heritage of the worlds most prestigious brand names. Previous honours have gone to the likes of Ferrari, Porsche, Jaguar, Toyota, to name four. The sculpture is often a photographic highlight of the festival and this year it’s Mazda’s turn to remind us all how Rotary engines are not all busted apex seals and ridiculous oil changes.

A spire of steel, comprised of 418 beams stacked like matchsticks, draws the eye 40 meters into the air. At the top, two vehicles representing Mazda’s endurance legacy and future. The 787B Le Mans car, which won the 24 hour race back in 1991, and their newest design the LM55 Vision Gran Turismo concept, named after the winning 787B’s number. It’s a symbol of the next step in Mazda’s rotary racing plan, hopefully this one will actually see some action since their former flagship, the Furai, was melted by Top Gear.

“When we first started talking about the central feature at Goodwood we wanted it to represent our brand through our design philosophy of Kodo,” said Ikuo Maeda, Mazda Executive Officer, General Manager Design Division. “Gerry has faithfully represented our brand in a striking and beautiful structure that is clearly Kodo. There is a lightness and strength to the structure, yet it gives the cars movement and energy, it is a sculpture that we are very proud to represent Mazda.”

Mazda’s Kodo design language is what you see trickling down into those sexy consumer vehicles the 3 and the 6, in some cases the CX 5 and 7. Those aggressive angles combined with airflow sculpting that kind of makes them all look like birds of prey.

Mazda’s LM55 Vision Gran Turismo concept, a tribute to their Le Mans champion 787B

Gerry’s sculpture is absolutely dizzying to behold, a testament to high-end torque rocketing into the sky, rolling into an inversion the cars resemble space craft entering orbit. It’s a beautifully engineered piece of art, which itself is an allegory for why our jaws drop to the floor every time we see a legend roll by.