Student Projects

Northwestern Baja SAE 2026-2027 Car

Project Manager

Katie Partee

Baja SAE

Amount Requested

$5,000

Summary

Northwestern Baja is a student-run team that designs, builds, and races off-road cars every year. The club provides an opportunity for over 60 engineering students to apply the knowledge they learn in the classroom to a real-life project. We race with over 100 teams from other universities around the globe in the Baja SAE competition run by the Society of Automotive Engineers. We develop our practical engineering skills, including solid modeling, design for manufacture, computer-aided manufacturing, welding, and engineering analysis. This project also requires our team to rely on one another and provides a real-world environment within which to learn collaboration, communication, leadership, and management.

This past year, we took over 30 students to our competition in Washougal, Washington, where we completed 26 laps in the 4-hour endurance race. To continue providing this incredibly unique, invaluable experience for our members, we need to continue pushing ourselves in what we can accomplish. The Murphy Scholars have always been incredibly helpful to Baja, and this coming year, we hope to use the funds to do more frequent testing of our vehicles that can provide us with data for better design, and to purchase better components and tooling.

Northwestern Baja has proved year after year to be a vastly educational and formative experience for our members, and we hope that, with your contribution, we can continue that experience for the coming year.

Planned Activities/Investments

This past year, we built our most innovative car to date, and we want to refine that design to produce a vehicle that is even faster, more efficient, and more durable. We implemented an electronic transmission system, data acquisition system, and adjustable dual-rate coil-over suspension. We hope to build upon the electronic team, so we can include a broader range of engineering disciplines.

Over the last few years, we have meticulously planned a month-long training curriculum with hands-on modules and written resources that allow our new members to fly into the design and participate with confidence. This year we hope to fine-tune our program for more efficient training to get people designing their projects quicker, and to accommodate more people as we expect the team to continue to grow dramatically.

Historically, our aggressive timeline has proved useful, allowing us to test, break, fix, and innovate our designs. We will push to have our car done more than a month before our competition, leaving us more time for the testing and tuning. We also believe that our engineering is now stronger than our driving abilities. As such, we hope to allow our drivers to gain more experience to fully push our cars to the limits and gain a competitive edge in competition.

Impact

Northwestern Baja has an intensive design, build, and test cycle that allows members to experience invaluable whole-brained and hands-on engineering in a real-world environment. Baja both complements and extends beyond the information gleaned in engineering classes, presenting realistic engineering situations with memorable lessons. As a result, members of the team develop a strong foundation in the design and manufacturing process in addition to confidence in their ability to communicate clearly and work in a team setting. This emulates work at real engineering companies where communication and collaboration are key.

Additionally, Baja always prioritizes giving back to the Northwestern engineering community. Since many of our members are shop trainers, we can pass on the design and manufacturing knowledge that is gained through Baja not only to other members but to all Northwestern engineers. We also show off our car during E-week, Wildcat Welcome, and the all-car team meeting to inspire new engineers at Northwestern.

Deliverables

Our major deliverable is an off-road car that places well in the endurance event at competition. We have found that these races are designed to break car components after repeated impacts, so durability is the most crucial factor in determining performance. In 2021, we placed 6th with a car that was slow but strong. In 2023, our car was just as durable while being 20% lighter, 30% faster, and placed 8th against much fiercer competition. This year, we aim to build a car that not only survives the competition but is designed to be ergonomic, easy to maintain, and fast.

Sustainability

Baja has continuously been supported for the last few years by a mixture of the Murphy Grant, McCormick grants, and donations from friends. We are constantly working to make our club’s finances run more efficiently and to acquire new sponsors as our team grows. Over the past three years, our team has doubled in size. We believe that our club will continue to grow, not only sustaining our team with excitement and energy, but also allowing us to advance further than we ever thought possible. We also have developed a very organized and reliable method by which to pass on our engineering, management, financial, and administrative knowledge, and we actively instill the importance of transferring knowledge and maintaining written records so that Baja remains sustainable.

Each year, Northwestern Baja fundraises about $35,000 from various sponsors and other contributions in order to pay for tooling, supplies, travel expenses, competition fees, and more. We’ve been continuously improving our outreach and have established relationships with many of our sponsors. With the help of the Murphy Society, we have been able to build a great car, and we see a lot of potential in the cars we build in the future.

Previous Project

We built a brand new car for the 2025-2026 school year, which we raced in competition this year in Washougal, WA. We placed 23rd overall among schools across the country and around the world. We also presented our design in front of industry judges, earning us 32nd.

Budget Overview

• Frame: $4,650 — The frame is the core of the car that everything is mounted to. We purchase our tubes from VR3 Engineering, then weld them ourselves. Our frame cost $4,618 in total last year. We plan to use a similar frame design that may be slightly more expensive this year.
• Engine: $515 — The engine is what gives the car power and allows it to run. Baja SAE only allows a specific engine to be used in any car, which was $515 off the BAJA SAE Engine Portal website last year.

Total Budget Amount: $50,000

Faculty Adviser/Department

Robert Taglia/Segal Design Institute