“Somebody has to do something, that somebody is
us.”
Scribbled in blue and yellow chalk on the cinderblock
wall of a garage plunked in the middle of a Divernon cornfield, these nine
words remind Illuminati Motor Works — a team of local engineers,
automotive technicians, and car enthusiasts — what’s at stake.
On a cold, snowy day in February, they huddle around
a woodburning stove in the garage’s far corner. Clad in Carhartt
coveralls and bulky winter coats, they ignore the chill and instead joke
about who drives too slowly, reminisce about the days before computerized
design programs, and lament the American automotive industry’s
dependence on foreign oil. But they’re not here to shoot the breeze, and
the conversation eventually returns to the mission at hand. Kevin Smith,
the team’s captain, shows off artistic renderings of a 1940s Dick Tracy-lookalike car and
gestures at the initial phase of the real-life version, strategically
arranged on the concrete floor behind them. A rescued suspension from a junkyard Dodge Neon and
two scuzzy seats extracted from a Pontiac Fiero are the only tangible
components so far, but more multicolored chalk illustrates the
vehicle’s future outline and a nearby pile of metal goodies promises
other parts.
They’ve worked countless nights and weekends
since August to get this far, and when they’re finally finished
they’ll have more than just an average car: They’ll showcase a
sleek, affordable, ecological design that they say will not only change the
world but will also do it in grand fashion as an official contender in the
international Progressive Automotive X Prize competition. Their vehicle will dominate all of the
competition’s requirements, they say. It will achieve more than 100
miles per gallon, emit a minimal amount of greenhouse gases, and smoke its
opponents in cross-country stage races set for 2009 and 2010. So far, Illuminati Motor Works is one of 60 teams
vying for the competition’s $10 million purse. They’ve already
pegged themselves as the underdogs because they aren’t toiling away
in professional laboratories or rolling in multimillion-dollar budgets. But
what they do possess are the engineering skills and technical know-how to
get the job done, plus a penchant for change that has already caught the
attention of such national media as Wired magazine. It doesn’t hurt that they’re thrifty.
They’re stockpiling spare parts from Springfield-area salvage yards
and combining them with innovative technology to create a car that’ll
be uniquely their own. As they say, they’re not here to reinvent the
wheel — just to make it better. “This vehicle that we’re building
isn’t necessarily our kernel, but we see how things can be improved
and adapted to achieve what we’re looking for,” says Thomas
Pasko, the team’s automotive technician. “It’s a matter
of ‘Why not use the history that other manufacturers have already
lived?’ ”
Five guys are the heart of Illuminati Motor Works.
Smith, referred to by his teammates as the
“alpha dog,” works for the Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency. It’s his garage that harbors the team’s best-kept
secrets and ingenuity, and it’s his enthusiasm and experience that
keep them going. As a college student at the University of Illinois-Chicago
in the ’90s, Smith helped design mini-Baja, solar-powered, and
electric cars and even, as he puts it, “cleaned up” at a few
national competitions. Since then he’s worked on motorcycles and cars
here and there, biding his time until an opportunity like the AXP came up.
Kevin Hecht, an electrical engineer, works with Smith
at the IEPA. He knows a lot about electric vehicles, vehicle propulsion,
and fuel economy from a previous career with General Motors. He worked on
the EV1, the first road-going electric vehicle launched in the ’90s,
until the price of oil fell and the automotive industry lost interest in
alternative cars — until now, that is.
Steve Becker is the team realist. The other guys
describe him as the one who makes them step back when they need to see the
“trees for the forest.” He was also employed by the IEPA but
recently retired after 17 years. Lately he’s been building
motorcycles from the ground up; he signed on for the AXP to flex some
graphic-design muscles that he never used while working for the state. Pasko, who met Smith years ago at AutoZone, has
operated Springfield’s Thomas Automotive Precision since 1985. He
credits two major influences for his love affair with cars: Speed Racer, the cartoon that
he used to watch every day after school, and Bob Hill, his sixth-grade
teacher who opened the door for him to study automotive technology at the
Capital Area Vocational Center. He thrives on innovations. Basically, he
says with a chuckle, that means that he buys a lot of “big-boy
toys.”
Josh Spradlin, the fifth member of Illuminati Motor
Works, is a microfilm operator at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
He’s helped Smith out with past projects and says that even though he
doesn’t know anything about electric motors or regenerative braking,
he knows how to turn a wrench. He’s always around to weld or assemble
parts, and he provides comic relief in high-pressure situations. The team jokes that Hecht gets the credit (or the
blame, if the team loses) for introducing Illuminati Motor Works to the
AXP.
Hecht was working one day when he stumbled across a
magazine article announcing the competition. He jumped at the opportunity
of designing another electric vehicle and rushed to show Smith a
spreadsheet that he’d been developing over the years. It included all
the data, he says, for what it would take to develop a 100-mile-per-gallon
vehicle. They realized that it would more than likely be a
self-financed project, so they first wanted to make sure that their ideas
were feasible.
The pair began scouring junkyards for usable parts and,
during lunch breaks, measured cars in the parking lot to determine the
proper shape and size for their vehicle. When all the components seemed to
fit, they asked the other guys to join in the fun and officially applied to
the AXP last September. So why “Illuminati Motor Works”? They chose the name, Smith says, with the intent of
educating and making things interesting. He blames the Steven Seagal movie Fire Down Below for
perpetuating the myth that the Illuminati — a secret society of
government officials — has been hiding a 100-mpg carburetor from
consumers. It’s all a conspiracy theory, he says with a tinge of
exasperation, because there’s no such thing. The only way to achieve
100 mpg is through an efficient engine and fuel-injection system, so
that’s what they plan to do.
“We call ourselves the Illuminati,” he
says, “the great government conspiracy that doesn’t exist, and
neither does the 100-mile-to-the-gallon carburetor. But here’s a car
that will do it.”
They’re calling their creation
“Seven.”
Becker, the head designer, says it will feature a
sophisticated design, somewhat resembling that of the Batmobile. When
pressed by a reporter, however, he won’t say which version he’s
talking about. He does say that it’s not the first Batmobile,
reminiscent of a 1957 Chevy Bel-Air, or the latest, which appears to be
inspired by military tanks. They’ve also played with various color
combinations, he adds — they’re thinking that black and white
might be cool.
Illuminati Motor Works accepted a bigger challenge from the get-go by
entering the mainstream-vehicle class of the competition, meaning that
their vehicle must carry four or more passengers and drive on four or more
wheels. They could’ve taken the easy road, Smith says, and entered
the alternative class, which has only a two-passenger requirement and no
constraints on the number of wheels. It would have been simpler to build a vehicle for the
alternative class, he explains, because its specified compact, narrow
design would easily provide the elements needed for fuel efficiency and
speed. But at the same time, Smith says, how many people would actually
purchase a two-wheeled car that looks like a torpedo? “People want to know: ‘How are you going
to get your aerodynamics down and make the car look cool?’ ”
Smith says. “We think we’ve got a pretty good compromise here.
It doesn’t look like a bubblemobile.”
Surprisingly, the seats play a crucial role. The
tattered Fiero seats are the same dimensions as the cushioned racing seats
that the team will eventually install in the vehicle. They’re low to
the ground, so they allow substantial headroom for men as tall as 6-foot-2
and as heavy as 240 pounds. Larger seats, Smith says, would require them to
widen the front end and would hamper aerodynamics. “The bigger you make it, the more frontal area
you have,” he says. “That’s basically an aerodynamic
footprint. The larger the aerodynamic footprint, the lower your fuel
economy.”
They also plan to solve this problem by extending
their vehicle to 16 1/2 feet long, roughly the length of a typical van, and
by tapering its back end. They will install rear-facing back seats that
will fit passengers comfortably within the allotted space.
The AXP requires each team to write a business plan
explaining why its vehicle is practical for consumer use and how it could
be mass-produced at a scale of 10,000 units. For this reason, the members
of Illuminati Motor Works want their design to be as simple and efficient
as possible but still include all of the creature comforts and safety
features that consumers expect.
They plan to incorporate a tilt steering wheel,
airbags, windshield wipers, a radio, and even cup holders into their
vehicle. Their
prototype will have a manual transmission unless they get more funding,
Smith says, but in the future they’d like to engineer an automatic
design. They’d also like to weave “more
magic,” he says, into their car by designing a hard plastic top that
snaps off the vehicle’s body to make room for hauling. It sounds like mechanical wizardry, but Smith says
that four-wheel steering is another could-be feature. Because they’re
using a pair of front ends from Dodge Neons (a front-wheel-drive vehicle)
in their design, he explains, they could steer from and power any of the
four wheels. This innovation would help the vehicle make tighter turns in
spite of its extra length.
By mid-March, the multicolored chalk lines have been
replaced by a solitary blue rectangle, which helps the team align the
components of their vehicle. In the past few weeks they’ve welded the
suspension in place and manufactured a large steel backbone that gives
“Seven” midframe support. Smith likens the frame to that of the De Lorean.
Fashioned from the same type of steel used in Formula 1 and NASCAR
vehicles, the frame will provide extra impact protection for passengers.
Instead of crushing inward as most long cars do, he explains, their vehicle
can withstand the pressure of an impact and will just be scooted to the
side. At this stage in the game, the team members are
playing things close to the vest. They’ve hinted about some of the
tricks up their sleeves to Illinois Times, but for the most part they’re keeping mum until
they unveil the final creation.
Becker and Smith are developing a top-secret body
composite, purportedly a superstrong and well-insulated material
that’s as cheap as the fiberglass used in boat building but as heavy
as the Kevlar in bulletproof vests. The result, they say, is “like a
block of steel that is almost weightless.”
Hecht, the electrical guru, is working on some new
energy-recovery systems. The goal is to use the energy that is normally
expended into the air as greenhouses gases. The techniques are pricey, he
says, but should be efficient enough to shoot Seven well over the 100-mpg
requirement.
The team’s engine may turn out to be the
biggest surprise of
all. The Illuminati crew admits that it has a hybrid drivetrain, meaning
that it will run on all commercially available fuel alternatives, including
electricity, biodiesel, ethanol, and natural gas, but for now the rest is
classified.
The AXP organization hasn’t announced the final
guidelines or deadlines of the competition, so all the Illuminati crew
knows, Smith says, is that its vehicle needs to be ready for the qualifying
race, set for early 2009. That means they have less than a year to locate all
of the parts they need, come up with new technology for their vehicle, and
assemble the whole thing from scratch. That’s not even counting the
time they’ll need to perfect their business plan, safety dossier, and
legal materials. “There is a very small amount of time allotted
to us to build a car from the ground up,” Smith says. “Even for
the Big Three, building a car from the ground up in one year isn’t
usually what they do — they usually have three years.”
The hardest part, the members of Illuminati Motor
Works say, has been planning around their day jobs and family lives. They
get together on weeknights and weekends, but in some cases they have taken
off work to start or finish up tasks. “Even an hour working on something else is an
hour less that’s going into the vehicle,” Becker says. If they do get behind, Smith says, they don’t
get stressed over it. They won’t adhere to a strict schedule, as long
as they complete the entire car by the morning of the race — even if
it means working in the truck on the way there.
But just in case they aren’t ready, they have a
backup plan. Some teams have evaded the timing problem, Smith says, by
taking existing vehicles such as the Loremo and Aptera and modifying them
to fit the competition’s requirements. Although the members of
Illuminati Motor Works don’t think that this approach will get them
close to 100 mpg, he says, it could achieve the qualifier’s less
stringent 75-mpg requirement. If all else fails, they’ll have a
second car, complete with their pioneered components and energy recovery
systems, waiting in the wings.
Getting funding has also proved challenging. Unlike the teams that
have multimillion-dollar budgets and sponsors, Illuminati Motor Works is
footing most of the bill. Using parts from other vehicles has helped keep
costs down, but they’re still looking at a final price of $25,000 to
$35,000.
“Our approach is being able to take basically
off-the-shelf items and building this ourselves in a garage in a cornfield
in Illinois,” Smith says. “We are on a very, very tight budget.
It’s all Visa and MasterCard right now.”
They’re hoping that their tight budget will
work in their favor, especially because the AXP isn’t looking for a
million-dollar car. Keeping the cost low helps guarantee that the car can
be mass-produced for a low price.
Even though what Illuminati Motor Works is doing is
time-consuming, stressful, and expensive, each team member says that
he’s proud to be part of an initiative that could change the way the
world works. Spradlin says that he wants to look back and tell his
kids that he made a real difference. Too often, he says, people complain
about problems but never work to come up with solutions. As part of
Illuminati Motor Works, he’s pouring sweat into something that he
says is pretty incredible for five average guys in Illinois corn country.
“If there’s a chance to impact the way
the world operates, why not give it a shot?” Spradlin says. “I
might not have all the knowledge in the world about what we’re doing,
but I’m willing to roll my sleeves and get my hands dirty.”
When Hecht was at GM, he says, he saw how dependence on oil would
eventually cause problems for the United States and the rest of the world.
A car that takes advantage of other fuels, he says, may encourage people to
use alternative energy in all areas of their lives. Hecht and Becker both say that Americans should win
the competition and that they want Illuminati Motor Works to be the ones to
do it.
“We’re good at doing the new
stuff,” Hecht says. “The United States basically gets credit
for inventing the airplane, inventing the microwave oven, inventing color
TV, putting men on the moon — so we ought to be the country that does
well. “It’s a worldwide competition, but
someone from the U.S. ought to go win the thing.”
“Friends have asked if we’re going to
win,” Becker says. “If we didn’t think we were, we
wouldn’t be doing it.”
Pasko shares the belief that Americans need to move
away from oil dependency and wants to help usher in the change. He loves
his muscle cars, he says, but he also hopes to teach consumers that they
need economical, ecologically sound vehicles for everyday use. He also gets the side benefit, Pasko adds, of showing
people that there’s more to automotive technicians than they think. “Automotive mechanic technicians are viewed
oftentimes as not necessarily the most intellectually advanced of the
society,” he says, “and I want people to see that there are
some of us out there that have gray matter.”
Because they’re not reengineering everything
and because they don’t have a huge budget, Smith says, the members of
Illuminati Motor Works hope to show everyone that they can win the
competition in a simple, inexpensive manner.
Until then, they’re finishing up their vehicle
and waiting for the moment when they get the chance to show their stuff. “Even if we don’t win the big money at
the competition,” Smith says, “we will still win, because
people will think: ‘These guys did this? Working where? In a
cornfield with some scrap steel and a woodburning stove for heat.’
”
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Mar 20-26, 2008.
