Elliott's Hardware
Gentlemen, start your engineers; racing proves a fertile ground for engineering lessons - includes related articlesJon Lowell
Gentlemen, start your engineers . . .
DAYTONA BEACH, FL--General Motors Corp. engineer John G. Callies is deep in thought amid five Pontiac prototypes that will never get closer to a real highway than the truck that carries them. And that's good. To drive, all five are achingly noisy, oppressively hot and so cramped that the shrimpy street version of the Pontiac Fiero that most are named after is luxurious by comparison.
Not far away, Ford Motor Co. electronics engineer Wayne Powell rummages through an enormous 18-wheel truck-trailer painted like a parade float. He seeks another black-box engine control for a car that says Merkur XR4Ti, but looks like something from a Saturday morning TV cartoon.
Also in close view are two squat vehicles called Polyvoltac Corvettes. They emit guttural engine eruptions that startle clouds of seagulls into the chilly-for-Florida late-January sky.
Also startled when asked if they work for Chevrolet are several men clustered around the Corvettes--with white shirts that say "Chevrolet" right on them.
The cameos are part of a scene replayed every year when megabuck auto racing begins a new season where it always does in the U.S., at the Daytona International Speedway.
But something is different this year. The automakers who pick up most of the $100-million-plus spent yearly on U.S. racing are fairly free in admitting their involvement.
There are rumors, as always in racing, of even bigger outlays next year. Each of the U.S. Big Three have existing resources that could move them much more prominently into the top-publicity Formula 1 world championship racing series, never won by a U.S. manufacturer.
Ford already has a Formula 1 engine in competition, Chrysler Motors Corp. is developing one through Italy's highly experienced Lamborghini Engineering SpA, which Chrysler now owns, and GM can call on Great Britain's Lotus Engineering plc, now a GM subsidiary. Ford's acquisition last fall of Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. and Chrysler's growing ownership of Maserati SpA (now 15.6%) also add powerful resources to their racing efforts.
Ward's Auto World is shown an already-tested wind-tunnel model of a Corvette prototype that may be racing at the famous Le Mans layout in France as early as 1989. Pontiac has a remarkably light, at less than 400 lbs. (182 kg), 5L V-8 race engine including a mounted starter.
Those who have argued for more lavish and self-publicized auto-company sponsorships contend that racing success can be promoted to increase sales of standard showroom cars and trucks.
The resume of zoom for ordinary street cars now that fuel prices are lower and supplies more than ample has triggered a renewed horsepower race, and woe be unto those who fail to promote at least the aura of socko performance.
Indeed, the old adage "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" is back with a vengeance against a backdrop of foreign and domestic automakers beefing up production cars with all manner or horsepower enhancements from turbochargers and superchargers to multivalve engines --technology long pushed to the limit on the nation's race tracks.
Moreover, despite a modest easing in the U.S. speed limit to 65 mph (105 km/h) on rural freeways, motorists are snapping up cars that can soar at 120 mph (193 km/h) and higher, apparently less uptight over the relationship of speed to death and injury on U.S. highways. In short, racing is enjoying new respectability despite its bloody history, perhaps in part because today's cars are engineered to protect drivers even in the most spectacular crashes.
Another major argument for sponsoring racers is that the extra design/ engineering involved to develop them spills over into higher-quality, better-performing mass production vehicles. But actual proof that exotic tinkering on the track improves the standard breed for the average comsumer has been hard to find.
Lately, however, that too has changed. Several automakers, in fact, now insist that modern racing, beyond making a transferable contribution to hardware development, is a uniquely valuable environment in which to train engineers.
Executives at such diverse organizations as Honda of America Mfg. Inc. (HAM), GM's Chevrolet Motor Div., Chrysler Motors, and Ford say their technical folks learn to cope with a fiercely competitive auto industry where increasingly complex decisions must be made using fewer people and less time.
"Everybody's more open (these days) about being involved," says famous race driver and team owner Dan Gurney. He speaks as mechanics make last-minute fixes on the pair of factory-sponsored Toyota Celicas that his ironically named "All-American Racers" team has entered in this year's 24 Hours of Daytona race.
"It's a great way to teach people to compete, short of war," he grins. "With the committees and long lead times (involved in engineering standard cars), you don't have the same motivation you have under racing conditions."
And, sure enough, during the 24-hour endurance race, traditional engineers do things far removed from their usual roles and tools. Computer-aided-design doesn't help make sandwiches, change tires, handle split-second fuel stops in a fire suit or drive the feared Daytona high banks.
In case anyone at Chrysler Motors wonders where some of its best young engineers and technicians were that last weekend in January, some 20 were in Florida--on their own time, but a long way from the beach. Their project was to prep a front-wheel-drive Dodge Shelby Daytona for racing using an unusually high number of refined production parts and pieces instead of racing-only components.
Normally the powertrain manager for a new Chrysler V-6 due to debut in 1990, engineer Peter Gladysz heads Chrysler's volunteer racers. He says racing has taught his team of technical types lessons that carry over into production drivetrains.
"There probably isn't one area of the can where we haven't brought back information that has affected production," he says while leaning against one of the trailers used to haul parts. "We haven't worried about interiors, but we have worried about nearly everything else."
A short list, he says, includes racing-developed changes in production engines, transaxles, brakes and wheel-mounting configurations.
The Chrysler drivers for the 24-hour race include a transmission engineer, a suspension designer and a Dodge dealer.
Using sophisticated telemetry equipment to monitor the Dodge Shelby's performance, they squeeze the car's 2.2L engine, originally designed for economy, to its outer limits--getting 300 hp from an engine and drivetrain designed for not more than 200 hp.
Team members say they largely have licked the tendency of front-drive racers to devour front tires, but they still struggle with horrendous handling problems that develop when the unpowered rear tires are running at below 120 degrees F (49 C).
At Daytona, problems with the engine's cylinder head shelves the car after only a few hours, amid the shrugs and head-scratching common to race teams.
The effort by Chrysler and the others --although more ambitious and open as each year passes--are nowhere near the blitzkrieg that Ford mounted in the mid-1960's.
At that time, one wag says, Ford brought new meaning to the phrase "wretched excess" when it came to spending on auto racing. For example, for around $20 million, which reportedly included buying a hotel in France, the 1966 Ford prototypes finished first, second and third at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
But Ford "got to so involved in racing, their mass-produced cars started going downhill," says a veteran of the effort.
Godfather of that frenzy was the late Henry Ford II. Interestingly, although the current Ford racing program is more modest and tightly controlled, it seems to operate under the informal but watchful eye of the late Mr. Ford II's son, Edsel Ford II, general sales manager of Lincoln-Mercury Div.
Michael Kranefuss is director of Ford Special Vehicle Operations, which monitors motorsports efforts. Those efforts offer varying levels of aid to existing racing teams.
In the U.S., considerable help goes to Jack Roush Performance and Engineering in Livonia, MI, an intensely professional company that's little-known outside racing circles.
Roush is under contract to run Ford's major road-racing efforts, plus a new National Assn. for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) program in a separate facility in North Carolina.
The Roush NASCAR effort is an engineering lesson in itself. Ford already has a highly successful stock-car program using the Elliott Brothers team from Dawsonville, GA.
The Elliotts have won about all a sponsor could wish for, and reliable reports say that they can make Ford racers do things company engineers can't. What has caused tension, it's said, is that the Elliotts won't share their knowledge.
Enter the fledgling Roush stock-car effort, with a talented but largely unknown driver named Mark Martin. There are no promises of early success, but, says the gossip on pit road, there'll be more Ford factory help for Rush than the Elliott Brothers can expect this year.
At the Daytona 24-hour race, Roush runs a team of XR4Tis and wins the GTO class after falling 35 laps behind at one point.
Electronics engineer Mr. Powell, 28, was on loan for the weekend from Ford to oversee the cars' complex engine electronics --put together from beefed-up production stock circuitry.
"This is our first 24-hour race, so Ford sent me to make sure everything is okay," Mr. Powell says during a rare idle moment. "We try to move people through them (racing programs). It's good experience. When you're in the engineering community, you're sometimes removed from the immediacy of problems.
"Here at the race track, there's no more immediate concern than if your car doesn't run. When a problem occurs in a race car, it has to be fixed now. If you don't fix it, you don't win."
One hears similar remarks from the teams that race for GM, where the change in the corporate attitude toward racing is perhaps most apparent.
For years, GM ran secret racing operations by quietly offering help to selected teams--help that in some cases included the massive resources of the GM Technical Center in Warren, MI. In the '60s, one team had a computer terminal linkup to the technical center hidden in a small locked room.
GM does have a public racing tradition that includes milestone years--like 1950 when millionaire American racer Briggs Cunningham astounded the international set by finishing 10th at Le Mans in what was virtually a street-stock Cadillac Coupe DeVille.
Today, some GM engineers and technicians remain jittery about talking on the record about their racing activities, but generally their attitude is open and upbeat.
Gary W. Dickinson, 49, is a GM vice president and group director of engineering for the Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada Group (CPC). He likes racing, but also is convinced it can help GM's comeback in U.S. car-market penetration.
"We don't really want to have factory teams ever again," he says of GM's current program. "We are actively involved in supporting, technically, specific race teams in specific kinds of racing."
A foremost benefit, he argues, is that GM engineers involved in racing acquire a true sense of urgency.
"We don't want to be just in the business of supplying sheet metal," Mr. Dickinson says. "That isn't something we learn from. We have a very clear-cut involvement with a few teams, instead of a broad, rather vague involvement with a lot of teams."
Attitudes of top management at GM, where racing was long an underground activity, have shifted dramatically, says Mr. Dickinson.
"There was a time at GM when it was just not okay to be involved in any way. Now we've gone through writing a policy statement and we're all working within that statement."
Simply put, that policy says, "We are not going to be fielding factory teams. We're going to leave that to the professionals," says Mr. Dickinson. "People like Roger (B.) Smith (GM's chairman) and Bob (Robert C.) Stempel (GM's president) are supportive of the kind of activity we have going now."
Now, he says, virtually no GM-backed racing goes on that isn't fully known to higher ups.
The new direction at GM is to allow engineers to work simultaneously on racing-related projects and production-car development.
"I see an opportunity here not only to expand our support for some of the better racing teams, but also an opportunity to have some of our young, high-potential engineers work directly with a race team," Mr. Dickinson adds. "I have talked to a couple of the race car owners and they seem enthusiastic."
Director of Chevrolet's special products group, engineer Herbert A. Fishel is a racing veteran and one of the company's pioneers in using race programs to train young engineers.
"It benefits the race teams and it benefits the design of our production vehicles" he says. "We have added some engineers to our group and some of these guys are recent college graduates. This is their first permanent assignment. We look for it to be a 2- to 3-year assignment.
"It's a very intense environment. You're always trying to make things lighter, stronger, more efficient. You're always trying to do more with less. These are all the right disciplines they are confronting on a day-to-day basis that require immediate decisions."
Among the lessons learned, Mr. Fishel says, is the necessity for engineering compromise.
"It isn't a deal where we'll come up with the perfect solution. The business of racing doesn't always give you time to arrive at the perfect solution. It gives you opportunities to arrive at adequate solutions. Probably the most successful racers today, from an engineering standpoint, are those who have learned the art of compromise."
The Chevrolet engineering special-products group totals only 13 people, 12 of them engineers. Three are there as part of a training program.
It's not a question of whether there will be racing. It will go on, says Mr. Fishel, as long as cars and trucks are built. So why not use racing to gain a competitive edge in the mass marketplace?
"There is the reality of racing," he continues. "There are some very tangible benefits from it. There are some intangible marketing benefits from the image, and there are some important benefits from the technology.
"I think we are now into the people age of it as far as recognizing that there are benefits beyond the marketing-engineering aspect."
Mr. Fishel cites Honda Motor Car Ltd.'s intensive use of racing to train executives as an industry model. "Most of their top executives are people who have been through the racing part of it," he says. That includes parent-company President Tadashi Kume and HAM President Shoichiro Irimajiri.
None of the GM divisions actually builds race cars, of course. That is left to outside companies who are specialists.
A case in point, ironically, is a nondescript looking building in the shadow of the huge Ford assembly complex at Wixom, MI.
It's the home of Protofab Engineering, builders of the Polyvoltac Racing Inc. Corvettes. The cars are sponsored by Polyvoltac Inc., a Canada-based maker of silicone foam products at an annual budget of more than $1 million. Marketing Vice President Jack Marshall describes the investment as a bargain that helps the company become a major supplier to the auto industry.
The vice president of engineering for 33-employe Protofab is Robert W. Riley, 57, a racing veteran who has worked in other companies' racing programs, including three times for Ford.
Chevrolet race cars aren't the only product at Protofab. Being worked on with surgical precision in a separate area is a brand-new Buick-powered car to be driven at the Indianapolis 500 this year by veteran racer Johnny Rutherford.
There's not much training available for auto company engineers at Protofab, however. "We don't have engineers hanging around," Mr. Riley says. "I don't think we'd like that."
The problem, he shrugs, is espionage. Small secrets win races, and even race-track crash sites are scrutinized in detail for clues to what the other guys are doing. So, no strangers lurk around Protofab.
In fact, these days the race-car shops are essentially high-tech kit builders who assemble components from various sources.
The Buick Motor Div. of GM, for example, continues a large-scale racing engine program despite its efforts to rebuild an image as a manufacturer of upscale family coupes and sedans. The slogan "American Premium" doesn't mean stody, say Buick executives, and no less than 20 racing engine builders are assembling $18,000 special Buick racing engines.
A racing version of the Buick Regal (rear-wheel-drive--unlike its street cousin) wins the prestigious Daytona 500 stock car race as one recent example of Buick's racing powess.
Each GM division, though, seems to handle the involvement of its engineers in racing programs a bit differently. David Jarrad took early retirement from Olds-mobile Div. as special vehicles manager, then was hired back as a racing consultant.
Cadillac Motor Car Div. is said to be unsure exactly what to make of a West Coast drag racing team campaigning under its colors, but with more powerful engines starting to sprout from GM's flagship --including an upcoming V-12--its staid boulevard image may get a lead-footed assist, like it or not.
GM's Mr. Callies is presently motor-sports manager for Pontiac Motor Div. based at the Mesa, AZ, desert proving grounds. His staff of six includes three engineers.
Given Pontiac's strong commitment to racing--from drag to stock--Mr. Callies' group is so busy, it must confine itself to meetings with visiting production engineers.
"We have seminars for engineers where they come out and we spend the day going through our whole lineup of pieces developed," he says. "We may generate an idea . . . We came up with new materials that are incorporated now into production (engine) blocks. It's a new type of gray iron with a lot higher tensile strength."
Hands-on involvement in racing, isn't for every ambitious young engineer, anyway, he says.
"What looks glamorous is a lot of hard work. Last year, I didn't have a fellow who didn't work at least 23 seven-day weeks."
And what of UK-based luxury car maker Jaguar Cars plc and its successful invasion of the Daytona 24-hour race? The Jaguar win broke an 11-year strangle-hold on the title by Porsche AG of West Germany.
Jaguar won't let its production engineers anywhere near the racing program.
"We're at a stage where (our engineers) have to be specialized," explains Jaguar spokesman Ian Norris.
But the glamour connected with racing success does improve the qualifications of people applying for conventional Jaguar engineering jobs.
Says Mr. Norris: "We get much better people applying."
Photo: Four Porsches that have never turned a wheel on a street crowd into a Daytona International Speedway turn while Dodge drivers at Daytona (right) include from left, technician Neil Hanneman, dealer Garth Ullmon and engineers Tim Evans and Jack Broomall.
Photo: Race track engineering (above) is all hands on. Try fitting this bodywork (right) on your Buick Regal. Yeah, that's A.J. (above right) at Daytona racing an import. Ford's Lynn St. James (far right) drives with the best.
Photo: Ford's LeMans Winners
Those were the days: During Ford's mid-'60s racing craze, the MK IV (left) Won in 1967 and the CT40 MK II (above) in 1966.
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