How do you learn how to design and build a car from scratch? You have to become an autodidact and learn everything you can about the subject. I’ve personally been amassing a design library to help me along with this project. In order to speed up the process I’ve scanned and OCRed these references into searchable PDFs and put them into Evernote. As I have read them, I have highlighted important points in them. This way, I am able to easily search for topics like “camber” or “kingpin inclination” and find all of the important passages on a particular topic across multiple sources.
There are a number of different sources you can turn to for learning about any subject:
- Published literature – books, magazines, journals
- Internet – forums, blogs
- Courses – MOOCs can be great sources of information
- Experts – nothing beats talking with experienced experts. They’ve already made all of the mistakes, so you don’t have to.
- Customers – talking with customers about what they want in a car is perhaps the most important aspect of designing a car. Right now the customer is me (I’m building it for myself), but as this project grows I’m going to go out and talk to more enthusiasts.
Overall Design
- Racecar Engineering Magazine – Perhaps the best single source of information. Back issues are available digitally from 2004 and it’s possible to get older issues on eBay.
- Carroll Smith – Engineer to Win
- Carrol Smith – Prepare to Win: The Nuts and Bolts Guide to Professional Race Car Preparation
- Carrol Smith – Tune to Win: The art and science of race car development and tuning
- Carroll Smith’s Engineer in Your Pocket
- Tony Pashley – How to Build Motorcycle-engined Racing Cars
- Chris Gibbs – Build Your Own Sports Car: On a Budget
- Walter Korff – Designing Tomorrow’s Cars: From Concept Step by Step to Detail Design
- Colin Chapman: Lotus Engineering: Theories, Designs & Applications
- Colin Chapman, the Man and His Cars: The Authorized Biography
- Colin Chapman: Inside the Innovator
- Driving Ambition: The Official Inside Story of the McLaren F1
- Stuart Macey – H-Point: The Fundamentals of Car Design & Packaging
- Richard Falconer – Chaparral
- Dave Friedman – Chaparral: Can-Am & Prototype Race Cars
- MIT OpenCourseWare – Transportation Courses
- MIT OpenCourseWare – Materials Science and Engineering
- MIT OpenCourseWare – Mechanical Engineering
Sustainable Design
- William McDonough & Michael Braungart – Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
- William McDonough & Michael Braungart – The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance
- Rob Thompson – Sustainable Materials, Processes and Production
- MIT OpenCourseWare – Environment Courses
- Coursera – Sustainability Courses
Tire Selection
Suspension Design
- Douglas Milliken – Race Car Vehicle Dynamics: Problems, Answers and Experiments
- Allan Staniforth – Competition Car Suspension: Design, Construction, Tuning
- Allan Staniforth – Competition Car Suspension: A Practical Handbook
- Donald Bastow – Car Suspension and Handling
- John Dixon – Tires, Suspension, and Handling, Second Edition
Electrical System Design
- Carl Vogel – Build Your Own Electric Motorcycle
- Seth Leitman – Build Your Own Electric Vehicle, Third Edition
Chassis Design
- Douglas Milliken – Chassis Design: Principles and Analysis
- Herb Adams – Chassis Engineering: Chassis Design, Building & Tuning for High Performance Handling
Body Design
Will Martin is an energy analyst and expert on peak oil and alternative currencies. He is an MBA graduate of Cornell University, where he was a Roy H. Park Leadership Fellow and concentrated on studying sustainability in business through the school’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise. Prior to his MBA, Will worked in the energy industry, living in Singapore, Houston and Dubai. Will is a recipient of the 2012 “Pioneer Award” from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO-USA). He currently works as a carbon trading commercial adviser in the San Francisco Bay Area. Will is a bitcoin enthusiast and in 2014 published the book “Anonymous Cryptocurrencies,” which became a #1 best seller in 3 Amazon categories and was the first book to be sold on a decentralized marketplace.
