It’s a Chevy Spark like you’ve never seen: An airy, swivel-seat lounge space that belongs parked inside Amsterdam’s funky Schiphol airport, instead of outside on the rental lot. Euro travelers napping on beanbags, all aboard the Clemson Deep Orange 5.
America’s only automotive engineering graduate program, the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research, is back with its fifth concept. After building an open-air BMW X3 and a Mazda plug-in hybrid, the Clemson crew partnered with General Motors to construct a Spark-powered hatch for studious college kids. Each of the four carbon-fiber seats, which have identically sized backrests and cushions, is on a powered track roller that allows passengers to recline and invert them to face each other (or, in budget Maybach style, turn them into mobile futons for two). Pivoting double-hinged doors with exterior LCD screens, a panoramic glass roof, wood laminate flooring, and exposed carbon fiber wrapping the roof and pillars complete the transformation.
Deep Orange 5 is meant for relaxing in a comfortable space that just happens to be in motion, hence the Spark’s 84-hp four-cylinder and droning CVT underhood. It’s for “young adults that have little money to spare,” who might enter a city college in 2020.
Associate professor and project lead Paul Venhovens told us his 17-student team envisioned a bi-fuel, all-wheel-drive, hybrid powertrain that would run on compressed natural gas. But the bulky composite CNG tanks would have raised the aluminum honeycomb floor and killed the laid-back interior vibe, so they reverted to the Spark’s original setup. That the Deep Orange 5 is substantially roomier than a real Spark and weighs just 200 pounds more is an accomplishment all by itself. As Venhovens says, the two-year course at Clemson is “Formula SAE on steroids.”
By next spring, Clemson will introduce another car hand-in-hand with Toyota, followed by a Mini concept again with BMW’s blessing. Rivkah Saldanha, the student project manager on Deep Orange 5, already landed a real engineering job with GM thanks to her work on the Clemson concept car. Who says this generation doesn’t like cars?
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