Saturday, May 23, 2009

Mazda Kiyora Concept

The Mazda Kiyora gives an indication where Mazda could go with a small, eco-friendly city car in the near future. It is highly fuel efficient, with a very small CO 2 footprint, delivering Zoom-Zoom driving fun and high levels of safety. The car achieves this by taking Mazda's acclaimed lightweight strategy to a new level by employing an extremely rigid and lightweight carbon-fibre body structure beneath a small, aerodynamic outer skin and a spirited, small-displacement 1.3-liter direct-injection engine.

Themes for the Mazda Kiyora concept include cleanliness, health and safety. These key aspects are essential for young city dwellers as well as any compact car in the current global environment. The concept was based on Mazda's sustainable technology vision, which aims to ensure customers can continue to enjoy a Zoom-Zoom experience in the future. Water was also selected as a theme for this concept, due to its association with the aspects mentioned above, and the car was named Kiyora (meaning 'clean and pure' in Japanese) to reflect this.

Exterior - Fusing Form with Function
The Mazda Kiyora concept car is formed in the shape of a water droplet on its side, as are its two side windows.
Its diminutive size and low roofline give it a small front cross-section. This is combined with an elaborate underbody that controls wind swirl, a rear roof spoiler, and specially sculptured body lines for a highly aerodynamic form with a coefficient of drag that is over 10 percent lower that of the current Mazda2.

Though small, Mazda Kiyora has a rear boot big enough to carry a large suitcase, a briefcase and a notebook. It is accessible via a liftgate that opens very high (with a low load floor level) for easy loading and unloading, and it's flexible. When the rear seats are not in use, you can push your luggage forward and stow even more, while the strong yet flexible seat material stretched over the seats holds the luggage in place. This system also has the advantage that it hides whatever is stored in the boot from prying eyes outside the car.

The doors and side windows of Mazda Kiyora are fused into a single unit and function as both. These 'windoors' are made of plastic, which provides the same transparency and refraction properties as glass, and the strength of a thin-panel door, but with far less weight. They are also easy to use and practical. Touching the surface of the front tip of the door activates a sensor, which opens the doors up and away from the car, a plus when parking in tight city spaces. They also allow a view into the interior when the doors are closed. But looking into Mazda Kiyora is more than just looking through glass.
The design of the wheels also supports the water theme. Its front spokes are convex and shaped like the blades of a boat propeller, while the concave back spokes are joined to the wheel rim and have a reinforcement that seems to grow out of the spoke itself. Kept very smooth, the wheels of Mazda Kiyora give a twirling, twisting surface articulation.

Interior Design - Visualised 'Nagare' Design and an Expression of Lightness
The interior shapes not only provide aesthetic motifs, they also function to stiffen the passenger compartment with minimal weight. The visible body structure is a real structural element of the car - stiff and crash-resistant. It is indicative of Mazda's approach to conduct a thorough structural analysis to solve complex issues such as safety and rigidity requirements instead of simply replacing materials with more expensive ones. The rear seats that are integrated into the body framework are also examples of this approach. Lightweight materials such as aluminium and a special resin foam, which is under development at Mazda, would be used not only for interior parts such as the instrument panel, but also for the bonnet, tailgate and sections of the chassis. Their effective usage contributes to improving the yaw moment of inertia and reducing the unsprung mass, and leads to superb handling.

The Mazda Kiyora concept has interior shapes that express Nagare 'low' by looking as though they are floating in a current of sea water that is moving from front to back. The instrument panel starts at a single point and lows around the driver and to the right of the front passenger as if it were several blades of sea grass growing out of a rock underwater. The front seats seem to float above the floor, and the arms of body structure twist like sea weed at the sides and top of the cabin. As well as being an integral design element, the door structure also functions as a side member and, in combination with the side sills, would effectively protect occupants in the event of a side impact.





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