It's a Chevy Spark like you've never seen: An airy, swivel-seat lounge space that belongs parked inside Amsterdam's funky Schiphol airport, instead of outside on the rental lot. Euro travelers napping on beanbags, all aboard the Clemson Deep Orange 5.
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America's only automotive engineering graduate program, the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research, is back with its fifth concept. After building an open-air BMW X3 and a Mazda plug-in hybrid, the Clemson crew partnered with General Motors to construct a Spark-powered hatch for studious college kids. Each of the four carbon-fiber seats, which have identically sized backrests and cushions, is on a powered track roller that allows passengers to recline and invert them to face each other (or, in budget Maybach style, turn them into mobile futons for two). Pivoting double-hinged doors with exterior LCD screens, a panoramic glass roof, wood laminate flooring, and exposed carbon fiber wrapping the roof and pillars complete the transformation.
-Deep Orange 5 is meant for relaxing in a comfortable space that just happens to be in motion, hence the Spark's 84-hp four-cylinder and droning CVT underhood. It's for "young adults that have little money to spare," who might enter a city college in 2020.
-Associate professor and project lead Paul Venhovens told us his 17-student team envisioned a bi-fuel, all-wheel-drive, hybrid powertrain that would run on compressed natural gas. But the bulky composite CNG tanks would have raised the aluminum honeycomb floor and killed the laid-back interior vibe, so they reverted to the Spark's original setup. That the Deep Orange 5 is substantially roomier than a real Spark and weighs just 200 pounds more is an accomplishment all by itself. As Venhovens says, the two-year course at Clemson is "Formula SAE on steroids."
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By next spring, Clemson will introduce another car hand-in-hand with Toyota, followed by a Mini concept again with BMW's blessing. Rivkah Saldanha, the student project manager on Deep Orange 5, already landed a real engineering job with GM thanks to her work on the Clemson concept car. Who says this generation doesn't like cars?
-from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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