Aussie school kids design McLaren drift car
British supercar-maker gets help from primary school children to design future drift carStudents from a South Australian primary school have helped McLaren design a special drift car.
The Year 3 students from St Francis Primary in Adelaide spent 10 weeks researching, designing and engineering their own McLaren supercar in the classroom.
Based on the McLaren Senna GTR, the two-metre-long drift car concept is dubbed ‘Tiger Stripe’ and came about after some the pupils expressed their delight in seeing a white McLaren driving around the local area.
“We chose to harness this enthusiasm and created our own learning program that saw students working in teams to research the industry, decide on key features, develop the design and then finally engineer the final complete model,” said teacher Tim Dennis.
“This included outlining the drift car’s specification and even learning about aerodynamics. It has been fantastic to get McLaren Automotive’s support to help bring this to life for the students.”
Aimed at getting school children interested in science, maths and design skills, the McLaren program covered start-to-finish design procedures, including sketches as well as building a small-scale model.
Upon its unveiling, McLaren design director Rob Melville praised the school kids’ efforts on the finished product, offering to answer any questions they had on automotive design.
“Great design tells a great story. The [Tiger Stripe] embodies the spirit of McLaren. It’s cool, fast and utilises technology to create a vehicle that is striving for technological perfection,” he said.
“I was very impressed with the students’ attention to detail, from the concept and research stage, to the final execution. Projects like this are so important because design is a tangible expression of how art and science combine to produce innovative ideas of the future.”
The drift car’s wheels are orange, to look “like fire as the car drives”, while plush teddy bear fabric was used to create comfortable cabin seating.
The students say that the vehicle, should it ever be built, will be priced at $2 million.
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