The Formula SAE Collegiate Design Series (CDS) has grown tremendously since its start in 1978 as Mini-Indy. There are now competitions around world involving students in organizing fictional manufacturing companies to compete against more than 250 other colleges. Competitions can be found in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria, Italy, Brazil, Australia and Japan.

The Formula SAE competition is based around a formula style racecar running an engine with a maximum of 610 cc. The vehicle starts with a student design that follows the more than 100 page rulebook put together for Formula SAE; vehicles must meet the criteria in order to compete. Regardless of being constrained, the competition does encourage students to be innovative and develop new ways to accomplish a successful design above other competitors. With completion of the design, the car is built and then tested by the students to prove (or disprove) their designs.

Teams traditionally compete in the various Formula SAE competitions on a yearly basis, meaning a completely new vehicle must go through this process each year. In addition to proving the designs statically through design, sales and cost portions of the competition, schools vehicles are put against each other dynamically in acceleration, skid-pad and endurance events.

To find out more about Formula SAE, and all other CDS, check out the SAE International website at: http://students.sae.org