The Hindu Business Line : Auto cos on catch 'em young mission

Pune June 15 Engineering students in the country who dream of designing tomorrow's cars have never had it better. Around 400 budding engineers from 27 colleges are already under the scanner of some of the nation's leading auto companies. And the cars they churn out might just be the forerunners to some innovative designs that might hit the road in the years to come.

Mahindra and Mahindra, Ford India and JK Tyres are amongst the sponsors of the first BAJA (pronounced Baha) SAE India 2007, a competition to design and build an all- terrain vehicle called Baja, that will be held at Pithampur near Indore from December 21-23. A two-day workshop, to familiarise the short-listed 27 (of 52 teams that applied) with the project, was flagged off today by F1 champion Narain Karthikeyan at the Automotive Research Association of India.

Modelled on the globally popular student competition Mini-Baja initiated by the Society of Automobile Engineers (SAE), USA, each of the teams will be supplied with transmissions from M&M and 9 HP petrol engines by Lombardini India.

In addition, sponsors will shell-out a cheque of Rs 2 lakh per team, to be backed strictly against bills of expenditure.

Bharat Forge, Emitec, Lucas TVS, M&M and Charutar Vidya Mandal have already come forward, and Dr Pawan Goenka, President M&M, and the chief supporter of the event, believes that sponsorship for the remaining 22 teams will not be a problem.

The idea, Mr Goenka asserts is to give youngsters a real-world engineering project and to get them "excited about the manufacturing industry". The annual event, he says, will be a premier competition on the college calendar that will "teach them to roll-up their sleeves and learn how to design a car".

Then, the auto companies can snap them up.

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