For the last several years, we have been fortunate enough to show you many demo vehicles from various car audio manufacturers. Typically, the time and place to unveil these projects is the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas each January. This year, Alpine Electronics chose to build a demo vehicle from the ground up at its facilities in Torrance, CA. Everything you see here was handcrafted, inside and out, in-house (aside from the airbrush work). As always, Alpine did not disappoint anxious car audio enthusiasts or retailers when the company unveiled the new project vehicle that dominated the floor at Alpine's booth at CES. The Alpine team has once again proven that it is the undisputed champion of the demo vehicle world.
No Roof, No Doors, No Problem
Back in June of 2003, a Mini Cooper S rolled into the Alpine headquarters and straight into the installation bay. Steve Brown and new partner Michael Vu, both R&D Engineers for Alpine, took one look at the "cute" little car and went to work for almost seven months. With last year's vehicle (Civic Si) reaching international stardom, this had to have a new twist to it (actually, it involved several twists by the time it was done). First on the list was to remove all the windows, windshield, moldings, and plastic trim on the vehicle. Then Brown and Vu chopped the roof off using a sawzall. That is not a misprint. With more room to work, every nook and cranny of the interior was removed until all that remained was bare metal. The two chose to go with the center drive concept, which was also used on last year's demo car. With Brown having experience with this part of the project, the installation went seamlessly. The pedals were removed from the driver's side and placed in the center of the vehicle, while the linkages were extended. All linkages were fabricated in-house using rods and sheet metal. The Mini employs Drive by Wire technology, so in order for the pedals to work properly a new mechanism was fabricated. Lastly, the steering column was extended and placed in the center.
Next on the agenda was welding the doors shut. How are you supposed to get into the car? From the rear of the vehicle. "This idea came to me at the 2003 CES show," explains Brown. "After walking the floor and seeing demo vehicles with different types of doors on them, I thought that having no doors would be a unique twist."
Sleigh Ride
The motorized seat, dubbed the "sled," resides on an eight-foot platform that motorizes out of the rear of the vehicle. When fully extended, the sled sticks five feet out from the back. Once you sit in the seat, it slides into the car towards the steering wheel. The motorization is activated through an EXT output on the Alpine security system. Incorporated into the sled and immediately behind the seat are two Alpine 12" subwoofers. This part of the installation was performed immediately after the roof came off, the motorized seat acting as the anchor for the installation. Everything else performed inside the vehicle would revolve around it.
With the sled weighing approximately 600 pounds, Brown and Vu carefully engineered the seat to not only be cosmetically appealing but reliable. On each corner of the vehicle (inside), bearing blocks that handle 10,000 pounds of vertical force were installed. Industrial-grade steel sliding rails, a custom-fabricated ball screw assembly (1 inch in diameter and 5 feet long), and a 12-volt electric motor ensure that the sled slides in and out smoothly and quietly. This painstaking process required countless hours of trial and error. Once they were happy with the movement of the sled, the base received some final welding. The seat has been tested time and time again with several people getting on and off the seat. Thankfully, there have been no problems whatsoever! A huge accomplishment in fabrication, no mechanical parts are visible when the seat is in the out position.
Audio/Video Haven
With the basic concept started, the two planned out the audio/video system. Usually a lack of roof means a sacrifice in sonic quality, so Brown and Vu wanted to make sure that this would not be the case. Careful planning went into speaker placement, port sizes for the subwoofer, crossover points, and power. With the planning completed, work on the audio/video system commenced. Multi-channel audio and video was the main theme behind the design of the system and represents Alpine's idea of the ultimate mobile multimedia experience. All of the products installed in the vehicle were seamlessly integrated into the vehicle, providing a symbiosis of sorts with the overall look and feel.