Formula Student is a design competition; the biggest and best of its kind in Europe and is run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), in partnership with the Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET), RS Components, Shell and SolidWorks. Formula Student promotes careers and excellence in engineering, by challenging university students to design, build, develop, market and compete as a team with a small single seater racing car. The competition provides students with a real-life exercise in design and manufacture and the business elements of automotive engineering. It teaches them all about team working, under pressure and to tight timescales. It demands total commitment, lots of late nights, and many frustrations and challenges along the way, but the net result is the development of highly talented young engineers. Formula Student attracts entries from universities all over the World, from the UK, mainland Europe and from the Americas, Asia and Australasia. For the universities, Formula Student represents a valuable project that blends academic work and learning with the development of practical engineering skills. They are increasingly using it to attract school leavers to their degree programmes, and to forge closer links with local industry. The automotive and motorsport industries in particular, and many other high technology engineering companies, know just how important the continuing supply of high quality engineers is to their success. For them, involvement in Formula Student helps them maintain and develop that supply. At a time when many university engineering courses have difficulty filling their places, Formula Student uses the excitement and appeal of motorsport to open young minds to the world of possibilities that a career in engineering involves, and gives them a wealth of real experience to prepare them for success in that career. For the purpose of the competition, the students are to assume that a manufacturing firm has engaged them to produce a prototype car for evaluation. The intended sales market is the non professional weekend autocross or sprint racer. Therefore, the car must have very high performance in terms of its acceleration, braking, and handling qualities. The car must be low in cost, easy to maintain, and reliable. In addition, the car's marketability is enhanced by other factors such as aesthetics, comfort and use of common parts. The manufacturing firm is planning to produce 1000 cars per year at a cost below $25,000. The challenge to the team is to design and fabricate a prototype car that best meets these objectives. Each design is compared and judged with other competing designs to determine the best overall car.