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The NUS FSAE Race Car Project

The NUS FSAE race car project is spearheaded by the Department of Mechanical Engineering and is strongly supported by the Faculty of Engineering as well as the University. The project was started in 2001 when a group of enterprising third year mechanical engineering students dreamed of building a race car to participate in the FSAE competition in Pontiac , Michigan , USA after their graduation. While it started life in this manner, this project has evolved over the last few years into an important educational component of the Mechanical Engineering Programme. This project allows student team members to put the engineering principles they learned into practice, better preparing them to meet the challenges in their professional careers in the future. In addition, this project also aims to achieve the following objectives:

1. To increase the visibility of NUS and Singapore in the international arena. So far, we are the only team from South-East Asia and from a nation that does not manufacture cars.
2. To serve as a tool to attract increasing number of talented young people in Singapore to consider taking up engineering.
3. To produce the needed engineering manpower in support of Singapore 's growing automotive supporting industry.

The first NUS FSAE race car (Hope-03) took almost two years to design, build and test. Due to a lack of fund, it never made it to the May 2003 FSAE competition. The second car (SGR-01) was completed in time for the May 2004 competition. It emerged an overall 58th out of 140 participating teams, and was placed 25th in the gruelling 22 km endurance event in which only 40 cars survived. The third car, aptly named “ The Centennial ” to commemorate NUS' 100 th anniversary, took only 6 months to design and build from scratch. The team incorporated a number of innovative designs to improve the car's overall performance. The Singapore Motorshow organizers requested it to be displayed at the November 2004 Singapore International Motorshow where it was unveiled by Minister for Transport, Mr Yeo Cheow Tong, and subsequently viewed by President SR Nathan. It took part in the May 2005 FSAE competition and is one of 48 cars out of 140 to survive every single event in the 5-day competition.

The fourth car, named Centennial II, was one of 15 semi-finalists selected for engineering design. It emerged the best from all Asia (out of more than 10 registered Asian teams) and 27^th overall out of 140 participating teams.

The fifth car is now being prepared for the coming May 2007 FSAE competition in Romeo, Michigan, USA.