Technical Paper
Project Fittipaldi: Leveraging Technologies and Knowledge to Create Exciting Products
2008-10-07
2008-36-0356
For the current brazilian market, the available sportive vehicles are mainly a slight modified version from a current model, usually only with appearance items. A good definition for a sportive vehicle should be something between a family vehicle and race car. A race car focus only in performance, obviously without any compromise for passenger comfort and a family vehicle is orientated for passenger comfort and safe behavior, for driver only or full load condition. One thought for a sport vehicle is a powerful engine, which should translate in greater acceleration, top speed and faster speed recovery. Besides the engine, other areas should support the increased torque and horsepower, resulting in improved lateral / longitudinal grip and faster steering response. Based on a production medium hatchback, several systems were improved in order to achieve a new exciting product, aiming a pure sportive behavior.