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CORVALLIS - Two off-road vehicles designed and built by engineering students at Oregon State University placed second and sixth out of 131 entries in this year's SAE Mini Baja West competition in Tucson, Ariz., which included a 100-mile endurance race.

One of the cars went on to finish fourth out of 144 entries at the Mini Baja Midwest competition in Troy, Ohio, beating all other U.S. engineering schools except the University of Michigan.

"Our students design their vehicles for the West competition, which places the most emphasis on ruggedness and reliability, whereas the Midwest competition's emphasis is on speed," said the team's faculty adviser, Robert Paasch, an OSU associate professor of mechanical engineering.

The Mini Baja competition series is sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) to give undergraduate engineering students "real-world" experience in designing, building and introducing a new product to the consumer industrial market - in this case, a single-seat, off-road vehicle capable of handling any type of terrain.

The competition is structured on the premise that teams are vying to sell their car design to a fictitious company that wants to manufacture 4,000 units per year at a production cost of less than $3,000 each.

The prototype cars, all powered by the same 10-horsepower Intek Model 20 engine, are rigorously tested for speed, traction, power, maneuverability and durability in dynamic events such as a 150-foot long straight-line acceleration run, a steep-hill climb, a narrow and winding maneuverability course, a rock crawl over boulders and rough terrain and an endurance race. Teams also compete in "static events," submitting design and cost reports and making a sales presentation to a team of judges.

The OSU team introduced significant design and testing changes this year, resulting in a 35-pound reduction in the overall vehicle weight and optimization of the vehicle's suspension system and power train. The team also put more effort into preparing for the design judging, cost judging and sales presentation events - effort that paid off when the team walked away with first place in the Mini Baja West presentation competition.

But according to Paasch, the key to OSU's impressive performances at both competitions goes well beyond design and testing.

"It is their awesome teamwork - definitely the best we've ever had," he said. When one of their cars rolled over during a race, the team performed a major rebuild of the front suspension in less than 20 minutes and got the car back out on the track for another 15 laps, Paasch said.