Steel wheels; Student designers pen pocket rockets to watch.(Headliner)(Brief Article)

Byline: JOHN D. STOLL

If you've been reading these pages for even a month, you know that design students who engage in industry-sponsored projects carry a lot of weight in the automotive realm (AW, Sept. 16), even if they're paid like dog walkers for their ideas. Sometimes, those ideas serve as inspiration for what eventually rolls down assembly lines.

Meet three hopefuls: Detroit College for Creative Studies transportation design seniors Rob Hunwick, Hyunsoo Kim and Antonio Molinari. The trio just completed one of the school's hottest internships, sponsored by the American Iron and Steel Institute. Their assignment? Build a pocket rocket tuner, something The Fast and the Furious crowd would buy and customize.

The project began with few constraints, one of which was that high-strength steel must be used as a distinguishing design feature. Concepts had to weigh under 3000 pounds, cost around $10,000 to produce, and boast fuel numbers beyond 50 mpg for gas sippers and beyond 60 mpg for diesels. Yes, the students were taken to steel mills and stamping plants for requisite materials orientation, but the real story centers on the designs. Interestingly, as AISI marketing manager Jody Shaw points out, the concepts lack the low, loud and lotsa-graphics attitude that often characterizes the tuner market.

Hunwick's Mitsubishi Apex is stripped of roof panels, Porsche Targa-style, exposing the vehicle's hydroformed upper steel frame as if it were a glass-shrouded go-kart. ``To a tuner guy,'' he says, ``that's cool right off the [assembly] line.'' Hunwick, a self-described truck guy aiming to weave import tuner and truck into one design, said he tagged the bulldog-inspired Apex a Mitsu because of its ``cool three-diamond logo.'' Hunwick spurts around Detroit in a Pontiac Vibe, which he says carries a lot of the high-riding characteristics he'd like to see enhanced by the tuner market.