High School Students Design a Concept Car, Look for Investors

Michael Melende, the team leader of the Skullcandy Concept Car Levibeat Team says his team is planning to build a concept car which they call the “Levibeat.” The Levibeat is a concept that was actually inspired by Skullcandy, a company known for making audio products such as headsets. Thus, the Levibeat's true goal is to glorify that idea of Audio along with media since "in my eyes we are going into an age where media is going to become a key factor in the car along with performance," Melendez, 16, told TorqueNews.

The Levibeat concept car idea was born from a status that read, “I wonder if anyone would buy a car that had an entire audio system done by skull candy now…” That status had several Facebook Likes and then he wondered what if something like this existed. They found it did not and with few other friends they joked to make it a reality.

"After joking around it just hit me in the head that this was actually a possible thing to do and I got my friends to realize as a team we could possibly create something unique. And shortly after, people offered to help." These people have now teamed up with Melendez and include nine people. Despite their young age, they have organized the business responsibilities well. Michael A. Melendez is the team leader. Madeline Canter is the team's secretary. Matt Gallagher is the chief designer. Richard Lowe is the team's Auto Reference. Mitchel Morgan is the company's Chief Programmer. Nik Westhofen and Sydni Hertig are involved in mechanical work, while Mitchell Morgan and Erik Berkman do programming for the designing team.

"I know most people would think that 9 people will not be able to build this concept, says Melaendez. Yet he adds that he believes that his team will succeed in its goal to build a concept car based off Skullcandy. "Right now we are in the early stages of the concept process. During the first few hours of the entire concept process I personally felt that maybe some of us might have been uneasy about what we were about to get ourselves into. But after ideas started hitting paper hope started to get into each of us."

The team got some boost after it finished the interior sketch. At that point "we knew we had something awesome brewing from our minds," Melendez adds. Shortly after they finalized a final version of the exterior sketch, which is now in the process of being converted into 3D by Matt Gallagher.

Specs of the car concept

The plan that the team has it to get its hands on a Audi 5.2 liter V10 engine. This is the same engine Audi uses in R8 Quattro. The plan is to tamper with the engine and increase horsepower to around 720-750 hsp. This car is going to be AWD. The main goal for performance is to hit a top speed around 220 MPH. The body will be carbon fiber.

The team is still are thinking of any ideas that they might have missed and right now they are figuring out how to raise funds. "We would love to have any investors interested in our project to contact us through our Faceook page," said Melendez.