Roush, Shelby, Saleen Bring 'Passion for Performance' to SAE 2004 World Congress

WARRENDALE, Pa., Dec. 15, 2003 -- What do you get when you bring the current Winston Cup champion car owner, the legendary designer of the Ford Cobra, and the builder of a 200-mph street-legal supercar together in one place? Attendees at the SAE 2004 World Congress will find out when the mini- conference entitled "High Performance Cars - A Passion for Performance" debuts at the SAE 2004 World Congress at Cobo Center March 8-11.

Performance car icons Jack Roush, Carroll Shelby, and Steve Saleen join Paolo Martinelli, Chief Engine Designer for the Ferrari Formula 1 Team; Peter Spence, VP and Technical Director for Toyota Racing Development; John Coletti, Chief SVT Engineer - Ford Motor Company; and Andy Tempest, Managing Director, Automotive Technology, for fabled racing and performance design shop Prodrive in the SAE World Congress program. Sir Jackie Stewart has also been invited to deliver the keynote address on Thursday, March 11.

Roush, Shelby and Saleen will appear at a 10:30 a.m. panel entitled, Niche Vehicles and Flexible Manufacturing: Building Consumer Excitement, Showroom Traffic and Profits - Can It Be Done? This session, moderated by Ted Robertson, president of ASC Industries takes place in the AVL Technology Theater on the exhibit floor.

SAE Automotive Projects Manager Dave Mitchell has worked with Coletti and others to put this program together. "It's exciting that so many of the personalities we have coming to the SAE World Congress are current and future legends in the performance vehicle and racing worlds," said Mitchell. "We believe the Passion for Performance mini-conference will attract some young engineers and professionals that may have missed the opportunity to come to the event in the past."

Car and Driver Editor-in-Chief Csaba Csere and Road and Track Technical Editor Dennis Simanaitis will moderate panels during the week on the design and development of the Ford GT and Cadillac XLR automobiles. The chief engineers and technical staff from GM, Ford, Lear Corporation, and Roush Industries will talk about the unique design challenges presented by these two exciting performance machines at Wednesday and Thursday panel sessions.

For the latest information about the "Passion for Performance" mini- conference, see the web page http://www.sae.org/congress/highperformance/agenda/ . For the latest information about the SAE 2004 World Congress, see the web page http://www.sae.org/congress.

SAE is a non-profit engineering and scientific organization dedicated to the advancement of mobility technology to better serve humanity. Nearly 84,000 engineers and scientists who are SAE members develop technical information on all forms of self-propelled vehicles, including automobiles, aircraft, aerospace craft, trucks, buses, marine, rail and transit machinery. This information is disseminated through SAE meetings, books, electronic products and databases, technical papers, standards, reports, and professional development programs.

http://www.sae.org/congress