PERRYSBURG – A student-built race car, engineered and assembled in
South Dakota with tools donated by IMCO Carbide Tool, was showcased Tuesday at
the Perrysburg business.Students from the South Dakota School of Mines and
Technology in Rapid City, S.D., showed the race car to employees, media and
other attendees in between their Formula SAE design competition at Michigan
International Speedway this week.The racing team and the Perrysburg business
partnered following an e-mail sent last year by a racing team member."They
said, ‘Hey, we are out here in South Dakota and we are building a car. Can you
help us out,’" said IMCO Vice President and Technical Director, Matt
Osburn."I said what do you need," Osburn said. "They said we’ll
take anything."From there, Osburn gathered some tools and shipped them
across the country."I thought, well, that’s probably the end of that we
will never hear from them again," Osburn said.But, he did.Osburn later set
a second assortment of tools to the student team."Matt here sends me
everything we need and this is what we get," said Evan Hoglund, a racing
team member who just graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering, pointing
to the race car.Anything metal on the car, the students said, was built using
IMCO tools.The race car has a top speed of 72 mph and can go from 0 to 60 mph in
four seconds. It runs on E-85.The cost to build the race car, including
donations and travel was about $120,000. When factoring in labor, the cost is
closer to $1 million."I believe the manufacturing base is what built this
country," Osburn said. "And these guys are going to go into
manufacturing and they are young and going to be the problem
solvers."Making things. That is what this country needs and that is what
these guys are doing. So, I was more than happy to support that," he
said.And, Osburn said, who doesn’t want to be involved with a race car?IMCO,
which serves the aircraft, automobile and general machining industries, also
provided technical support to the students and instructed them on how to use the
tools."It looks like they have built an awesome race car," Osburn
said.At the competition at MIS, the Hardrocker Racing Team from South Dakota
will be competing against 120 teams from all over the world. The team has fared
well in the past at the competition, placing third in the autocross event in
2011 and second in the skid pad event in 2010.