Racing from the Great White North

This article focuses on Motion Concept Vehicles Inc.’s (MCV) in Mississauga, ON, which is creating a $225,000 supercar. When the idea was born, the car was to run on natural gas, or methane—hence, the car’s original name, CH4, as in the chemical nomenclature for the gas’s operative compound. The prototype has already hit the Toronto streets and runs on natural gas. The engine in the CH4 prototype is a General Motors 4.6-liter, multivalve V8, converted to run on natural gas. The maker of the gasoline engine that will power the first production models is still being determined. MCV had a strong enough story to attract optical scanning leader Steinbichler and alias/wavefront, the Silicon Graphics subsidiary that builds software for designing and refining surfaces. MCV must bring the design geometry up to so-called class A surfaces within the alias/wavefront software environment, which is called SurfaceStudio 9 in its latest release. This process of perfecting a car's surfaces to be both structurally and mechanically sound as well as aesthetically pleasing takes a fraction of the time it took in the days of clay models, the companies point out.