Subaru's Richard Burns Wins World Rally Championship with Help from Dassault Systemes and IBM Design Solutions

    BANBURY, England & PARIS--Dec. 5, 2001--Dassault Systemes --

    Product Lifecycle Management Solutions Used in Car Design is Vital
    to the Subaru Driver's Victory in the FIA Series Last Sunday

    The Subaru World Rally Team, along with IBM and Dassault Systemes announced today that the use of Product Lifecycle Management Solutions from IBM played a critical role in Richard Burn's victory at last Sunday's FIA World Rally Championship.
    CATIA V5, the world's leading 3D design application within IBM's Product Lifecycle Management portfolio, was instrumental in the development of the victorious Subaru Impreza WRC 2001 rally car, notably in engine design and testing, as well as roll and body cage.
    Based in Cardiff, Wales, the Network Q Rally, is the UK's largest annual rally event, attracting hundreds of thousands of people. In fog and driving rain, the Subaru rally car was able to keep up the pressure on the other drivers, balancing skill and speed on the final four stages, through perilous forest roads.
    "We have managed to achieve an incredible win," said Julian Cooper, Chief Designer at Subaru World Rally Team. "CATIA has enabled us to design most of the parts on the car, the modeling and checking of installations in record time and with unflinching quality. CATIA has been essential for most of the key elements, but most importantly for the roll and body-cage." These safety features are necessary to minimize the risk of high-speed rallying for Richard Burns, the Subaru pilot, who became the first Englishman ever to win the FIA World Championship, since the series was established in 1979.
    Subaru has now been the driving force behind five FIA World Titles. The Japanese model was manufacturers' champion in 1995, 1996 and 1997, and the Subaru Impreza powered Colin McRae to the Driver's title in 1995.
    Cooper continued, "The CATIA package is a vital part of the Subaru Team. We use it in modeling, packaging components and checking installations. Many parts of the body shell on this year's car were designed on the system - the complex roll cage fitted to the Impreza WRC2001 is a prime example. CATIA enabled us to design a lightweight, but extremely strong cage, the sections of which can be precisely bent and cut by computer controlled machinery."
    "Another benefit of our using CATIA is that we can share information easily with the Subaru designers in Japan who also use the system to design road-cars. Being able to transfer ideas back and forward in this way is a great bonus in the development of high performance Subaru road and rally cars."
    Kim Stuckey, Worldwide Small and Medium Business Manager, IBM PLM, said, "Optimizing a race car for specific races at specific venues represents the ultimate time challenge for product innovation. This is one of the main reasons why PLM Solutions from IBM are so focused on the auto-racing laboratory, where quality and speed play such an important role in victory. We are very excited about this win that demonstrates the power of PLM Solutions from IBM and Dassault Systemes. One of our primary goals here at IBM is to create value for customers by providing them with the most powerful tools to leverage knowledge and innovation. With CATIA V5 backed by the strength of IBM service and support, Subaru has the power to innovate in car design and dominate on the track. The proof is Subaru's fantastic fifth title at the FIA World Rally. By relying on IBM and Dassault Systemes, Subaru has positioned itself in first place."
    "We are proud that Subaru and Richard Burns, the new world champion, have selected CATIA", said Etienne Droit, Executive Vice-President of Dassault Systemes, Sales and Marketing. "Their choice confirms once again Dassault Systemes' foresight and leadership in delivering strategic 3d PLM Solutions, based on V5 technology, to the automotive industry. The Dassault Systemes and IBM partnership with Subaru is a real opportunity for us to further develop and implement innovative technologies."

    About The Subaru World Rally Team

    Established in 1958, Subaru has been part of the world rally scene for just over two decades but has already become one of the legends of the sport. The major successes achieved by Subaru on the World Rally Championship have come from the Impreza model range, run by Banbury-based Prodrive. Subaru has gained an enviable reputation for cutting-edge, innovative design and is the only manufacturer to have contested the World Championship solely with four-wheel-drive cars. As well as developing some of the world's most admired road and rally cars, the Subaru World Rally Team has also launched the careers of a number of the sport's top drivers, such as Richard Burns and Colin McRae. Former World Champions Ari Vatanen, Juha Kankkunen, Carlos Sainz and Didier Auriol have also driven for the team.
    Further information on the team as well as rights-free high-resolution photographs can be found at http://www.swrt.com
    Stephen Webb, Subaru World Rally Team PR Manager
    E-mail: stephen.webb@swrt.com

    About IBM

    IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM Sales & Distribution, which supports more than a dozen key industries worldwide, works with companies of all sizes around the world to deploy the full range of IBM technologies.
    The fastest way to get more information about IBM is through the IBM home page at http://www.ibm.com

    About Dassault Systemes

    Dassault Systemes is the premier global software developer for the CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM market, providing companies with e-business solutions to implement their digital enterprise, thus creating and simulating the entire product life cycle from initial concept to product in service. The CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA Solutions support industry-specific business processes to help unleash creativity and innovation, reduce development cycle time, improve quality, competitiveness and shareholder value: CATIA supports the digital product definition and simulation, DELMIA provides solutions to define and simulate lean digital manufacturing processes and ENOVIA delivers enterprise solutions that manage a comprehensive, collaborative and distributed model of the digital product, processes and resources. The combined integration creates the Digital Product life cycle Pipeline, supporting reuse of corporate knowledge. SolidWorks and SmarTeam, as Dassault Systemes companies, offer respectively 3d design-centric and collaborative PDM software solutions based on Windows and the internet. Spatial, also part of Dassault Systemes family, is a market-leading provider of world-class 3d software components and services (for 3d modeling, visualization, and interoperability) to meet the requirements of 3d in Internet-based e-commerce and B2B applications.
    Information about Dassault Systemes is available at http://www.dsweb.com.