Mazda Nagare Concept

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What is it?
Mazda Nagare Concept

What's special about it?
According to Mazda's new global design director, Laurens van den Acker, the Nagare (pronounced "na-ga-reh") is a celebration of proportions and surface language that will hint at coming designs of the next generation of Mazda vehicles.

Celebration of proportions and surface language? Seriously? Mazda tells us Nagare is Japanese for "flow and the embodiment of motion."

It gets better.

According to the press release handed out on the show floor, Nagare examines light and shadow to convey a feeling of emotion even when the car is still.

Translation: Nagare is a design exercise and little more.

Mazda even admits as much, saying the Nagare represents a "design-first, engineer-later" philosophy rather than the usual form-follows-function approach. Among the engineer-it-later ideas is a possible hydrogen-fueled rotary engine developed from Mazda's current fleet of hydrogen-gasoline-fueled RX-8s already in service in Japan.

One of several Nagare concepts sure to never make production is the centrally located driver seat which provides better visibility and headroom for the critical seating position. Three other seats surround the driver seat making the Nagare a true, if weird, four-seater. Two long doors hinge up and forward to provide access to the cockpit. Or so we're told. Mazda never opened it on the show floor.

What's Edmunds' take?
It's difficult to have hard opinions on cars that have no chance of making production. Nagare's styling is striking, but how much it means to Mazda's future is difficult to judge. Van den Acker says it's a vision of what Mazda automobiles could look like in 2020, but that seems like a glittering generality. — Josh Jacquot