Newsletter Archives; Fall 1996

The hard work of twenty-eight undergraduate Mechanical Engineering students was rewarded when the scaled-down autocross race car they designed and built as a class project placed a very respectable 14th overall out of 77 cars entered in the 1996 SAE Formula Car competition, held from May 15 to 19 at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. The students worked for nine months to design, build and test this car.

The 14th place finish was a significant improvement over last year's car, which placed 26th out of 84 entries. This year's car also received Honorable Mention in the competition for the VRP Recyclability Award, given to the vehicle which is most successful in using recycled materials in the vehicle design.

The Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Car Competition is an annual event jointly sponsored by General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. The competition challenges university students to design and build a prototype formula-style racing car of a type which might be driven by a non-professional weekend autocross racer. The car must have high performance in terms of acceleration, braking, and handling, but must also be low in cost (less than $8000 per car) and easy to maintain. The car must meet additional technical requirements and constraints.

Associate Professor Dale Calkins, faculty advisor to the UW SAE Student Chapter and instructor of the course in which the car was designed and built, was very pleased with the results achieved by the car his students produced. Many designs look good on paper but don't work very well in practice. The success of UW SAE Car #117 proves that these students have learned not only the techniques of design but also real-life skills in manufacturing and production which they will take with them as they enter the work force.