Our 2023 vehicle was Virginia Tech's third rendition of a four wheel drive vehicle. We took inspiration from the previous year's drive train set up, but then completely overhauled ever part of the car. Our main goal was to make the car's drivetrain run more efficiently, make the car easier to control, and overall handle rougher terrain easier. This resulted in a completely custom drive train where the only off the shelf component used was bearings, a change in our suspension geometry which allowed us to achieve 15" of suspension travel while maintaining optimal kinematics, as well as overall reliability improvements.  With these changes we once again were able to run a drivetrain set up replicated by no other team on the field while maintaining the second highest amount of suspension travel in the competition. 

During travel, the team worked each night to ensure that for the 37th consecutive year, VT Baja would be competing with a band new vehicle. Our team prides itself in our ability to manufacture a brand new vehicle every year while at the same time keeping old vehicles 100% functional to serve as driver training and testing platforms. Like many other teams however we did run into many hurdles throughout the manufacturing process. Still in the wake of the pandemic we have experience many supplier and shipping issues that caused our schedule to constantly change. This heightened our ability to react quickly as new situations arose. We showed up to our first competition with only about two hours of run time on the vehicle and a brand new set of gears that had not even been broken in. Even with this rather large hurdle we were still able to dominate the dynamic competition placing us in the top five of our first competition.

Designed, built, and supported by an outstanding group of engineers, our 2023 vehicle proved itself once again to be the quickest and most capable in the team’s history, and this is a trend to strive to continue in the years to come. We are not just a set of engineers. We are a family that trains, builds and teaches each other every step of the way.