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LAS VEGAS — The Specialty Equipment Market Association Show may be known for such seemingly frivolous automotive accessories as spray-on chrome, 26-inch wheels, lift kits that elevate 4x4s for crawling over boulders and bolt-on components that produce ungodly amounts of horsepower.

But somewhat hidden within a technology area inside the Las Vegas Convention Center last week was what may be the least showy of the hundreds of vehicles at SEMA — the Deep Orange 3 from CU-ICAR, the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research.

The Clemson display included the car’s working chassis and a scale model of the body that will cover it for its official unveiling at a major auto show in 2013.

The chassis is the result of two years of work by graduate engineering students at Clemson, in Greenville, S.C., and is as futuristic in its technological innovation as is CU-ICAR among graduate-level engineering programs.

CU-ICAR was begun at Clemson about five years ago to give the students a more real-world taste of automotive vehicle development and has master’s and doctoral candidates not only in traditional courses but also in what amount to on-campus internships in conjunction with automakers, suppliers and other partner companies.

For example, Deep Orange 3 is sponsored by Mazda, but more than two dozen other companies are also involved, including SEMA.

Mazda’s prospectus for the students was to create the vehicle they would want to buy after graduating. However, the vehicle could not be purely a science project. It had to be based on market research and practicality for production.

Among other partnering companies, Auto Pacific shared its proprietary database of automotive consumer demographics and Industrial Origami offered its patented technology for folding rather than stamping metal (in this case aluminum) to create a framework strong enough for an automobile chassis.

Research into their own peer group led students to engineer a vehicle with a hybrid powertrain and all-wheel drive and to opt for three-across seating for the front and rear seats, partly in a homage to the old bench seat but primarily because Gen Y sees driving as a social, not a solo experience, so why take two cars when you can fit everyone in one, said Chris D’Amico, a graduate student.

By slightly offsetting the three-across seats, Mr. D’Amico said, the students were able to provide room for six people in a car that is only as long and tall as a Mazda RX-8 sports car and as wide as a Chevrolet Camaro.

The car has a tailgate-style rear hatch,” Mr. D’Amico said, because “Gen Y likes to ‘hang out.’” To that point, there are two sound systems, one inside the cabin and another with speakers hidden beneath the fenders. Those exterior speakers provide music for tailgating and generate sound so pedestrians can hear the car even when it is operating only under electric power.

To make sure the car is as attractive as it is innovative, the Clemson students turned to another school, the Art Center College of Design in California, where a design competition was held. Fred Naaman, a design student at Art Center, won that competition and worked with the Clemson engineering students in modifying his design and their chassis to create a functioning automobile.

And if you’re wondering about the Deep Orange moniker, it comes from a BMW skunkworks code-named Deep Blue and from Clemson’s school color, said Dr. Paul Venhovens, BMW-endowed chair in automotive systems integration at CU-ICAR.