Show full PR text GrabCAD Announces Supercar Design Challenge winners



GrabCAD, an online community of over 195,000 mechanical engineers, has announced winners for a hugely popular supercar body design challenge. Engineers from around the world submitted 194 designs in just 40 days for the opportunity to win cash prizes totaling $3500. The challenge was organized in cooperation with 500Group, an intellectual property company that engineers, patents and licenses new technologies to industry with total worldwide sales currently in excess of $420m.



Noteworthy:

- One of first and largest crowdsourcing design competitions to be actually scheduled for production

- 194 unique and stunning submissions in 40 days of challenge

- Thousands of feedback comments from engineers in community to engineers participating in challenge

- Unique method for selecting winner; Winning submissions selected by sheer number of "likes" from GrabCAD community (assuming they followed all design guidelines set in challenge details)



500Group and GrabCAD developed the challenge to create a supercar body for a chassis that is currently undergoing testing in the UK's "F1 belt." Developed under a General Motors special-projects supply agreement, the car chassis incorporates all GM performance parts and feature the GM V8 line of E-Rod LS3, LS7 and mighty 638hp supercharged LS9 engines. The car is scheduled for a 2013 launch.



For more information or to view all submissions, visit: http://grabcad.com/challenges/supercar-body-challenge



GrabCAD is the largest online community by, and for, Mechanical Design Engineers. Whether an engineer is looking to share their talent and designs with the world, a company is looking to crowd-source solutions to their toughest design problems or is in need of contracting directly with an engineer for ad-hoc design work in lieu of a full-time hire, or if anybody simply wishes to download from our extensive catalog of free models, GrabCAD brings the power of the web to all mechanical design needs.



Harnessing the power of crowd-sourcing in sensitive design areas can yield many, many different nuanced approaches to any engineering or design problem. The customer has the benefit of harvesting many surprising ideas that can combine to make a vastly superior final product, in either performance or safety, as compared to any small team or individual engineer.

Often, engineers are forced to sit and watch as accountants and stylists wreak havoc on a vehicle's design. GrabCAD recently decided to turn the tables by giving engineers the chance to pen a body for a ready-made chassis by 500 Group. The site was flooded with 200 unique designs completed in just 40 days. The top quarter of those went on for final judging in two categories: street and track. 500 Group will then actually produce one or more of the designs through a General Motors Special Projects agreement.The chassis makes use of a number of GM Performance parts, and is set up to make use of the E-Rod LS3, LS7 or supercharged LS9 V8 engines. One skinless chassis has already been completed for testing.Each concept body has plenty of renderings as well as full description. Be sure to check out the full press release below, as well as a video of the chassis on track. Then, head over to the GrabCAD site for a deeper dive.