What MCV Won't Do

What MCV Won't Do

By Gale Morrison, Associate Editor

Motion Concept Vehicles knew enough from the beginning not to try to do it all. For instance, the company, which is designing the body and chassis of its supercar, is acquiring many elements of the final design from established parts suppliers for world-class high-performance automobiles. MCV must do two things: meet all U.S. and Canadian safety standards and keep the price far below racing' s typical $1 million tab for a top-of-the-line race car.

A look at the suppliers for the MCV supercar shows just how sophisticated car parts can be when one is not working with everyday commercial price constraints. Of course, Pirelli tires are part of the program. Specifications also call for Hyperco suspension coils, Schroth seat belts, and light assemblies from Hella, to name a few.

The list of suppliers is still incomplete, as MCV is still making final decisions on engine and transmission components.

The seats, brakes, and rims are being outsourced. Hella' s German automotive colleague Mannesmann VDO AG, the Frankfurt-based instrument maker, is involved through its VDO Kienzle worldwide trade-sales organization.

Automotive suppliers know Logansport, Ind.-based Hyperco because its roots are in the former Rockwell spring and stamping operation. Matthew Warren Co. purchased that Rockwell manufacturing facility and is now the corporate parent of Hyperco, which is the design and distribution arm for high-performance parts.

Hyperco supplies its suspension coils to every Indy race car team, and to hundreds of other race car endeavors. These coils enable chassis setup within five or 10 thousandths of an inch, Hyperco says. The coils are manufactured from chrome silicon steel that goes through magnaflux surface inspections, both before manufacture and after coiling.

MCV' s president, Robert Waddell, said dampers for the brake components are coming from Dynamic Suspensions, the Multimatic subsidiary based in Markham, Ontario. (Pittsburgh-based brake giant Monroe had been involved, but has since decided to exit the high-end business.)

Another clear example of how sophisticated car parts can get is the Schroth seat belts MCV will use. Schroth is a Boulder, Colo., automotive design house. The seat belts, or restraints as Schroth terms them, combat the issue of submarining, which is the tendency for the driver or passenger to slide under a lap belt in a collision. As the company describes it, an inertial reel and motion sensor are positioned on the in-board strap of Schroth' s double shoulder harness.

The reel is deployed by the force of instant deceleration, and it forces the driver' s torso and hips to rotate slightly into an asymmetrical posture, which tightens the lap belt milliseconds faster and helps minimize the risk of submarining. This does not require the possibly painful crotch strap that other racing harnesses do, Schroth notes.

Schroth uses a polyamide webbing for the restraint to minimize the forces during the rebound phase of an accident. Polyamide does not have the "rubber band" effect that other webbings can have; the elongation rates of the webbing are said to be better for reducing stress to the body. The polyamide material also has a high transversal stiffness for better load spreading.

If history is any criterion, mass-produced cars will someday carry some or all of these advancements. In that way, MCV' s and the world' s race car programs might be compared to NASA, in that the most demanding engineering obstacles are overcome for the overall, long-term benefit of other engineering disciplines.