Research Projects

Understanding Corrosion and Preservation of Automobile Surfaces

Before we can understand how to care for vehicles, we must understand the object before us. Central to our research is the 1952 Cunningham C-4RK, an aluminum-bodied race car with a nitrocellulose lacquer coating. The car was built by legendary racer and entrepreneur Briggs Cunningham with the goal of creating an American-built sports car capable of winning the 24-hour race at Le Mans.

1952 Cunningham C-4RK in the Collier Collection in Naples, Florida.

The C-4RK performed beautifully at Le Mans, but ended up finishing 11th overall due to a crash during... Read More

Exploring Driver Psychophysiology

Studying the mechanics and dynamics of automobiles has been an active area of research for mechanical engineers for decades, but there are also many fascinating, and as yet unanswered, questions about the “inner workings” of the driver.

Exploring Driver Psychophysiology directly addresses these questions by recording physiological data, including brain wave, heart rate and skin conductance data, from the driver of a vehicle in real time.

The brain wave data is recorded via scalp electrodes, measuring EEG (electroencephalography), which provides information on many aspects of... Read More

The Representation of Cars in Video Games

With the global successes of modern video game racing franchises Gran Turismo, Mario Kart, and Need for Speed, it is easy to forget that over the past 30 plus years, racing games have had a long, diverse history. Some of the earliest electronic games were racing games: starting with handheld electronic games such as the 1977 Mattel Auto Race, to arcade games like Reiner Foerst's Nürburgring (~1975-6 ) and Tele-Games' Night Driver (1976), and continuing through classics like Pole Position (1982) and Vette! (1989), car games have been a place of experimentation with the concepts of realism... Read More

The Revs Digital Library

The Revs Institute has a large and varied collection of automotive materials, including images, research books, ephemera, and specialized documents. The Revs Program at Stanford is producing research data and generating course materials.  The primary goal of the Stanford Library is to ensure these materials are indexed, preserved and made available to library patrons, researchers and the general public.  By digitizing materials and making them discoverable, content that was once available to a select few becomes useful and discoverable for a wide range of researchers. 

Working with... Read More