The piping-hot slice of transportation from the future comes our way from Mazda, who showed it off at the L.A. Auto Show earlier this week. Called the Nagare, the concept car is named after the Japanese word for "flow." Mazda designers and engineers modeled the car's very-caressable contours on patterns in nature that result from the natural motion in the environment — wind shaping sand in the desert, for one example. Another would be the stream of onlookers' drool dripping down the hood.

One of the wilder design innovations is the interior, which puts the driver front and center, facing a stylish dashboard with a Knight Rider-esque steering wheel. There's room for three passengers, who surround the diver in a kind of "passenger lounge," complete with rear-seat LCD. A Mazda spokesman strongly implied the company has plans to turn the concept/prototype into an actual production model in the next few years. We'll definitely save room for it in the garage next to our Tesla Roadster. In the meantime, enjoy some more sweet pics and a bit o' video after the jump.
— Peter Pachal

Via Car Keys and TechEBlog