Case Studies

Selected placement history:
Cover story: "Racing Designers Improve the Breed," Design News, May 3, 1999, pages 75-78.

Zero to Sixty in No Time Flat
In designing and building its new C12, Callaway speeds from clay model to auto show in only four months

The Callaway C12 super sports car is not just fast — it's slam-you-back-in-your-seat fast. It goes from zero to sixty in 4.3 seconds and reaches a top speed of 200 mph. The C12 represents Callaway Cars' first entry into the automotive market as a world based manufacturer with its own cars.

"It carries the combined lineage of Callaway Cars, of IVM Engineering and Callaway Competition which built the body, and of the fifth-generation GM Corvette, from which the C12 platform is derived," says Reeves Callaway, president of Callaway Cars, based in Old Lyme, Conn. "It is certainly the most sophisticated vehicle we have ever produced." The C12 was built to be a road car first and eventually to race at Le Mans in the GT2 class, which requires entries to be street-legal production derived automobiles. Callaway's design advantage was an ability to optimize the track width, the aerodynamics and the vehicle kinematics for the track, while utilizing the basic structure from GM.

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