One of the traditions of the Goodwood Festival of Speed is that each year they lend a prominent spot in front of the Goodwood house to a car maker so they can raise a sculpture there. This serves as both an eye candy for the visitors and a way to honor the heritage of the car maker’s in question. This year’s sculpture is created by Mazda.

Inspired by the Kodo design language that has spawned their latest models, Mazda’s Goodwood sculpture is a 40-meter colossuses second in height only to the Chichester Cathedral spire. It is designed by Gerry Judah using 418 steel beams, each a different length and angle, stacked like matchsticks to convey a sense of movement and speed.

Fitted to the top of Mazda Heritage Sculpture are two very significant cars including the Le Mans winning Mazda 787B which took overall victory in the famous 24 hour race in 1991 and the Mazda LM55 Vision Gran Turismo car. This year Mazda is launching the new MX-5 sports car and the Goodwood gig is certainly going to help create more buzz for the little roadster.

Usually,” commented Gerry Judah, “the one thing you never do with steel is to twist it, so this year we had an impossible challenge to find a way of corkscrewing the entire structure, and we succeeded with an elegant and graceful system that shows of the elegance and grace of the cars themselves.”