The name “Volvo Gravity Car” may bring to mind vehicles from the covers of old Popular Mechanics, but in reality this engine-free vehicle doesn’t so much defy gravity as work with it. In particular, it goes downhill. The high-tech soap-box-derby car was built to compete against the creations of other manufacturers such as Porsche and General Motors in the 2004 Extreme Gravity Competition in Irvine, California – a charitable event raising money for America Works for Kids. Doug Frasher, strategic design chief at Volvo’s concept center in California, brought the Gravity Car to The Screen Savers, and we were able to squeeze in a few questions during his stay in the Green Room.

How long ago did you start planning the car?

We started before Christmas last year thinking about it. I tried to get the rest of the team involved, and one other guy ponied up another design proposal, so we had a little competition. We chose to build the one that I designed this year, and next year we’ll run the one he designed. We really delayed the choice right up until the last minute. We had about three weeks to complete the car once we got started on it, so it was pretty much up against the wall.

What were your chief design goals with this car?

I just wanted to do something that was interesting – competitive but also very visually interesting. I wanted the people that come to this event to see some imagination applied to this whole problem of a gravity race car.

How was the Volvo car different from the other racers?

The fact that it’s not a four-wheel, one-on-every-corner configuration is different. The fact that it uses a prone, head-first position is pretty unique – only one other, the Porsche, had that configuration. That the car is not really completely enclosed – the human is exposed to the air – is quite unique as well. So, all told, it was a very different entrant than any of the others.

Did you use any new technology, or was this a case of rethinking old technology?

The technology that you use to make a soap box car is pretty fine-tuned stuff. It’s well-proven. In fact, I understand that the really competitive racers are using bearings that have been seasoned for a couple of years. They’re finely tuned to eliminate any possible friction or drag. So we really didn’t have the ability this time around to get that tight – it was just enough to get the thing built. But we did use the technology we use to do our prototype cars: It’s virtually designed on the computer, the tooling required to make the various parts is milled numerically, the fairing is laid up with carbon fiber and Kevlar – which it doesn’t have to be, that’s just purely because we had a lot of that laying around from some of our prototype car work. In that sense, it’s really just the integration, the problem-solving of the form and function that’s involved – you don’t really need to get that high-tech with it.

Did you learn anything as a designer from the process?

I think there’s some exploration to be done now on the basic minimalism that the car represents. One thing that we do in our studio a lot out here in Camarillo is that we contemplate the whole problem of energy consumption and social responsibility. So we’re always trying to figure out how to alternatively drive and propel a vehicle, and it really comes down to: How much energy are you wasting as you’re rolling down the road? And I think this minimalism can teach us a lesson. In other words, if you started from this (the Volvo Gravity Car) and built up to a road car, you’d come to a different result than if you started with what we have on the road today and tried to work to an efficient car. Approaching the problem from a different perspective is always healthy. And I would love to do a road car version of this, which is really just a high-efficiency single-person or maybe a tandem vehicle for the road. That could have a lot of implications for future mobility and vehicles.