What is the Mini Baja?

The Mini Baja competition is held annually by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and challenges students to design and build a working mini Baja car, which are loosely based upon larger vehicles built for the grueling Baja race. In this competition the student run team must design and fabricate a working vehicle that meets the SAE’s stringent safety standards, yet still be cost effective and ease of manufacturability.

The vehicle itself is a cross between a commercially available go-kart and an ATV in that most on go-karts have very responsive handling, and acceleration but no suspension, whereas ATV’s have rugged suspension allowing them access to the most remote areas. The mini Baja car combines the best of both worlds, allowing for a go-kart that can go off-roading. [Vehicles like this are sometimes called dune-buggies.] Every team competing in this competition uses the same stock 10hp engine very generously donated by Briggs and Stratton, and no modifications are allowed to the engine, which makes this competition very design oriented as opposed to a competition seeing who can get the most money for the most powerful engine.

The Mini Baja competition is broken down into a variety of static and dynamic events, which climaxes with the 4 hour endurance race. The static events include a cost breakdown along with a reproducibility report, which includes how we would plan on manufacturing thousands of these vehicles for the ‘weekend rider’. Dynamic events include the mud bog, hill climb and the much anticipated endurance race.