In the time it takes for you to count to four, the aluminum frame that Todd Summe and his team of 50 Alcoa engineers and technicians designed for Ferrari will carry that Italian sports car from zero to 60 miles per hour.
Summe is the design engineer coordinating the Ferrari team at the Alcoa Technical Center in Upper Burrell. In that country setting in northern Westmoreland County, the world's leading aluminum producer designs the "spaceframe" -- that part of the undercarriage that supports about 95 percent of the structure -- for four Ferrari sports car models.
"We have a tight collaboration with Ferrari. We have experts in aluminum alloys and in automotive development," Summe said Wednesday while standing next to a $180,000 Ferrari F430 fire-engine red coupe parked in the lobby of the Alcoa Corporate Center on Pittsburgh's North Side. Summe was on hand, along with Alcoa automotive and Ferrari officials, as 20 scale models of futuristic Ferrari designs were placed on display.
The Ferrari F430 spaceframe designed at the Upper Burrell facility weighs about 400 pounds, which is about 13 percent of the car's 3,100-pound curb weight.
Before the design phase began, Summe said they had many meetings with Ferrari, including teleconferences. Ferrari is constantly looking for "leading-edge technology," Summe said.
Alcoa knows what Ferrari wants in the design because "we sit at the table with Ferrari and Pininfarina," its world-class designer, to discuss the overall objectives of Ferrari for its vehicles, said Misha Riveros-Jacobson, president of Alcoa Advanced Transportation Systems.
"The idea is to be one step ahead on the technology," Riveros-Jacobson said.
Alcoa, along with the rest of the aluminum industry, is pushing technological advances in aluminum to expand its presence in the automobile market.
Aluminum has surpassed iron as the second-most-used automotive material worldwide, behind only steel, according to The Aluminum Association, a trade association in Washington, D.C.
Aluminum, a more expensive metal to produce per ton than iron and steel, was not a major player in the automotive industry for decades.
But that changed as a result of the energy crisis in the 1970s, when automakers scrambled to make vehicles lighter and thus more fuel-efficient, said Phil Morton, an Alcoa spokesman.
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Aluminum in the auto industry
Aluminum has been used in vehicles since Henry Ford's Model T was made in Detroit in the early 1900s.
Source: The Aluminum Association Inc., Washington, D.C.
