First look: Mazda reveals its radical new style

MAZDA is at it again. The revitalised Japanese brand has given a sneak preview of yet another adventurous new concept car.

This time, however, Mazda says the Nagare, which will make its world debut at the Greater Los Angeles International Auto Show on November 29, really does herald a bold new corporate styling theme for the company, which will employ it to gauge public and press reaction in LA.

While last year's Sassou, Senku and Kabura show cars offered more fantasy than reality, Mazda Motor Corporation says Nagare presents "the first indication of Mazda’s future design direction".

"Nagare is a celebration of proportions and surface language that will evolve into subsequent designs planned for presentation at future international auto shows," said newly-appointed general manager of Mazda’s Design Division, Laurens van den Acker.

"Nagare examines light and shadow, and begins to reveal the global design cues for the next generation of Mazda vehicles."Dubbed "flow" and described as "an evolving expression of Zoom-Zoom" by Nagare design team leader and director of design for Mazda North American Operations in Irvine California, Franz Von Holzhausen, Nagare's adventurous exterior sculpting is claimed to be "an indication of Mazda Design’s confident step in a new direction".

"Inspired by the movement of nature’s elements, our designers have captured motion, energy and lightness, translating into a beautiful language of lines and forms that are powerful yet effortless, provocative yet strikingly seductive," said Mr Von Holzhausen.

Mazda Australia's spokesman Alastair Doak said that while Nagare is very much a design concept preview rather than a production model preview, the striking bodyside feature revealed in the image is not just paint - but wildly sculpted sheetmetal.

"It represents the next step for Mazda design, but that's not what the next-generation Mazda2, for example, will look like," he said.

MMC will also use this month's LA show to exhibit the all-new CX-7 crossover SUV launched in Australia this week and its first seven-seat SUV - the CX-9 V6 that was revealed at the New York motor show in April and goes on sale here in early 2008.