While many of the new Champ Car Atlantic Championship teams are busy preparing this holiday season for an assault on the 2006 series title, Atlantic partners Swift Engineering, Cosworth, Pi Research and others are hard at work trying to fulfil their bulging order books. source: crash.net Since the revamped series was announced back in July, no less than 40 of the new Swift 016a chassis have been ordered, and all the firms behind this huge growth in popularity are in full swing to make sure all orders are ready in time for pre-season testing in early March. In the design phase, engineers had a pretty clear-cut goal of what they were looking to create in the new Atlantic machine. "We were looking for a bigger, badder, faster Atlantic race car that was the least-expensive car to produce in order to keep costs down for the teams, keeping in mind that we need to meet the level of sophistication and technology that is expected in this series," said Steve Sewell, Champ Car manager of technology, who has worked closely with all of the manufacturers involved in the production of the new Atlantic. After receiving input from many sources, including teams, competitors and series officials on specific design components of the new car, representatives from the Atlantic championship, Champ Car and Swift Engineering set out to create a machine that was slightly larger and faster than the Swift 014.a design that had been used in competition since 2002. The '06 car will be nearly eight inches longer and approximately 100 pounds heavier than the previous model with more room to accommodate taller drivers and it will include about 60 more horsepower. With the increased size and power, the new Atlantic is expected to provide a steeper challenge for the competitors in the series as it prepares them to take the next step up the development ladder to the even bigger and faster cars of the Champ Car World Series. The challenge, of course, was to create this unique open-wheel beast at an affordable price. Working closely with their trusted manufacturing partners, Atlantic officials were able to meet their goal as they developed a car that features a chassis tagged at $79,500 and a complete running race car that costs $175,000, a figure considered very affordable by modern standards in auto racing. Both the cost containment and the design of the '06 Atlantic were made easier by relying on the expertise and experience at Swift Engineering. Swift has been making Atlantic cars since 1987 and the manufacturer has produced more race-winning cars (174) than any other chassis designer in the 32-year history of Atlantics. The complete article here at Crash.net
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