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Automotive Industry

The victory of perseverance: sometimes, becoming a bona-fide car designer takes a little longer than you might expect. But if you stick with it

Automotive Design & Production, June, 2003 by Gary S. Vasilash

Like several high school students, Jeffrey Berger wanted to be a car designer. Yet, when he was preparing to graduate, Art Center in Pasadena, he recalls, seemed a long, long way from home in Pennsylvania. So instead, he went to Penn State. And eventually received a Master's degree in Engineering. No degree in design. Upon graduation, he did move west. To Indiana. He took a job with Allison Gas Turbine, where he was first doing finite element analysis (FEA), then worked on designing gas turbine engines and components. Design, in a sense. Not cars.

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He left Allison and went to U.S. Centrifuge in Indianapolis. It makes centrifugal processing systems. It spins out things like paint sludge. It was a small company. Berger had had enough of working at a big outfit. Berger had met the owner of the centrifuge company through go-kart racing. He'd then done some computer analysis for him before getting the full-time job. Berger was doing primarily engineering work for the firm. His specialization in finite element analysis led him to start his own company, which had essentially been incubated in U.S. Centrifuge.

The company he started is named Fin-el Cwww.fin-el.com). That's as infinite element. Once again, it was all about FEA. Being in Indianapolis, a number of Fin-el's customers are race teams. So they do structural analysis of things like pushrods and control arms-making sure that these components are light enough to keep the vehicles' weight down, but capable of handling loads.

Berger says they also do some design. But suspension components and bell housings and the like. Not cars. He was working with Solid Edge 3D CAD software from EDS PLM Solutions (www.solidedge.com). But he wasn't designing cars.

Things changed in the fall of 2001. He was contacted by David Klym of the FABCAR racing shop (Carmel, Indiana). Klym was looking at participating in the then-being-defined Daytona Prototype racing class, part of the Rolex Sports Car Series. These are closed cockpit, purpose-built vehicles that have normally aspirated engines up to 5.5 liters. Klym was interested in buying some design software from Fin-el.

Berger convinced Klym to let him work on the car design. He, after all, had always wanted to be a car designer. And he got the job.

"It started out with hand sketches," Berger recalls. Then it was onto the CAD system. He worked from October to December on the preliminary bodywork and chassis design. Then when the Grand American Road Racing Series sanctioning body had all of the regulations specified in January, 2002, Berger did some modification work to his design--a task that he calls "melt and repour." The bodywork was done by the end of February. The entire design was complete in April (Klym worked on the front suspension setup and another engineer worked on other components).

Two cars were built during the summer of '02. By October, the vehicle was on the test track, sans bodywork. By the first weekend of November, the car was undergoing a shakedown at Daytona.

The second race of the series, the Nextel Grand Prix of Miami, was won by the #59 Porsche-powered FABCAR car. A car that Berger had designed the previous year.

Berger's design had already been a winner. In February, he'd received two awards in the annual Solid Edge design contest. Of 150 entries from all over the world, only four awards were given out. Berger won for assembly design and the User's Choice award--voted on by fellow Solid Edge users. Berger recalls that the last time one of his car designs won an award was in 1979. When he was in high school. Patience sometimes pays.

Automotive Industry

The victory of perseverance: sometimes, becoming a bona-fide car designer takes a little longer than you might expect. But if you stick with it

Automotive Design & Production, June, 2003 by Gary S. Vasilash

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