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BMW bobsled.

Home designconceptBMW bobsled.

BMW bobsled.

Jan 31, 2013 | concept, people, producer |
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bmw-sled1-pattonclick > enlarge

BMW designers at DesignworksUSA, the company’s satellite studio and design consultancy in California, turned their skills in working to design a new sled for the U.S. Men’s Bobsled Team headed to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

Applying processes similar to its vehicle development, the company says, BMW has paired intelligent lightweight materials, such as carbon fiber, with optimized aerodynamics to design the new sled. Michael Scully, Creative Director, BMW Group DesignworksUSA, says “BMW EfficientDynamics techniques are at the heart of the sled’s design, making it sleeker, lighter and we hope faster: essentially a BMW on ice.”

BMW used its expertise in designing with carbon fiber “from BMW i, the company’s sustainable division, which designs strong, lightweight carbon fiber electric vehicles, “ the company says. It also relied on aerodynamic experience and the careful distribution of weight—a longtime BMW virtue.

“BMW was able to reconfigure the sled’s weight distribution to achieve an optimized balance of the regulations’ mandated sled weight. The result is a significantly lighter body shell with a low and centralized center of gravity.”

A prototype of the new sled ran on January 19 at the FIBT World Cup in Igls, Austria and finished 14 out of 30 teams at a contest in Switzerland. That result was not bad, designers say: the concept will be refined before the final sled is built.

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Phil Patton

about Phil Patton

Phil Patton is a contributing editor at Departures and Esquire magazines, a contributing writer at Wired and an automotive design writer for The New York Times. He was a regular contributor to The New York Times House and Home section and, in 1998, originated the “Public Eye” column. He has written many books including: Made in USA: The Secret History of the Things That Made America (Grove-Weidenfeld, 1992), which was named a New York Times notable book of the year; Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile (Simon & Schuster, 2002); Michael Graves Designs: The Art of the Everyday Object (Melcher, 2004); and Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51 (Villard, 1998). He has also written for Art in America, ARTnews, Connoisseur, Geo, Harper’s Bazaar, Men’s Journal, The New Republic, New York Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Travel + Leisure, Traveler, The Village Voice and Vogue. Patton was Editorial Consultant on the Guggenheim Museum’s “Motorcycle” show in 1998 and Consulting Curator for the “Different Roads” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1999. In 2000 he was consultant and contributor for “On the Job: Design and the American Office” at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

view all entries by Phil Patton.

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