Swift Engineering
Swift Engineering is an American engineering firm, most notable for producing racing cars for a variety of open-wheel racing series, including Champ Car World Series, Formula Atlantic, and Formula Nippon.
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[edit] History
Swift Cars was founded in 1983 by David Bruns, Alex Cross, R.K. Smith, and Paul White [1]. The first car, the DB-1, was a Formula Ford 1600 which won the SCCA National Championship in its debut race. [2] The company later built cars for Sports 2000, Formula Ford 2000, Formula Atlantic and CART. Swift chassis won the Atlantic Championship from 1989 to 1992 and British Formula Renault in 1990.
In 1991, Swift was purchased by Panasonic executive and Indycar racing driver Hiro Matsushita who renamed the firm Swift Engineering. Under his direction Swift moved up to the CART World Series from 1997 to 2000, with two cars entered by Newman/Haas Racing and driven by Michael Andretti and Christian Fittipaldi. In CART, Swifts won four races from 182 race entries. Tarso Marques was the last driver to race a Swift chassis in CART competition.
In 1998, Swift became the sole supplier for the new spec regulation Toyota Atlantic Championship. In 2006, the Atlantic race series became a part of the Champ Car (formerly CART) organization and was renamed the Champ Car Atlantic Championship Powered by Mazda. Swift built an entirely new car for the series, using 016.a as a chassis code.
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Swift is the sole supplier of chassis for the Japanese Formula Nippon championship, beginning in 2009 with the 017.n chassis. [3]
[edit] Aviation
In 2007 Swift Engineering produced the prototype Eclipse 400 single engine jet aircraft under contract to Eclipse Aviation. The aircraft was built in secrecy at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and first flown on 2 July 2007. [4]
[edit] References
- ^ "Rekindling The Flame". Archived from the original on August 25, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060825141549/http://www.champcaratlantic.com/News/Article.asp?ID=2108.
- ^ "First Win PR". http://www.apexspeed.com/swift/documents/FirstWinNewsRelease.pdf.
- ^ "2009 Formula Nippon cars to be made in USA". http://www.autoblog.com/2007/08/30/2009-formula-nippon-cars-to-be-made-in-usa/.
- ^ Trautvetter, Chad (July 2007). "Eclipse Goes Solo with Concept Jet". http://www.avweb.com/news/airventure/EAAAirVenture2007_EclipseConceptJet_195692-1.html. Retrieved 2008-11-15.
[edit] External links
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