Auto News 5

Success, Winston Churchill once observed, is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. By that measure, Volkswagen is as successful as they come.

Yes, this is a wooden car. Forget the jokes. Anyone making more than mere decorative use of wood in an automobile has heard them all. And doesn't care. Wood is a magnificent structural material, "God's own composite," proclaimed the late Frank Costin, the brilliant technologist behind the glorious shapes of early Lotus cars, the Vanwall Formula 1 car, and-significantly-the plywood chassis of the Marcos in which a young Jim Clark won some of his first races.

Make no mistake, the Mazda Kiyora is not a concept car. At least, not as the term is typically used these days, when what is presented as an idea about the future is in fact a hastily restyled upcoming production car, presented to prepare public opinion in advance: "Wow, the new Thingamajig came from the Chimera concept car." No way will we see versions of the Kiyora on the streets anytime soon. Or ever.

A rally-racing Cayenne? Porsche factory driver Carles Celma is making a convincing argument for it, a twenty-foot rooster tail of shredded earth spewing from the rear tires as he power-slides down a straightaway. There's a hard, fast left ahead; the Spaniard left-foot brakes and-magically-the SUV transfers its two-and-a-half tons, sliding just short of a precipice that drops 100 feet into a valley. Celma sends the Cayenne bucking through a dry, sandy wash and then aims the vehicle down a narrow dirt track, blurred tree branches slapping hard at the windows.