Oregon State University engineering students won back-to-back international racing competitions this spring with an off-road vehicle they designed and built.

The OSU Beaver Racing Team’s Mini Baja vehicle won first place overall at this year’s SAE Mini Baja West competition in Portland on May 11-13, beating 84 other teams from 22 countries, including teams from top U.S. engineering schools.

The vehicle then took the top honor again at the SAE Mini Baja Midwest competition held at the end of May in Elkhorn, Wis., where 141 teams competed, some from as far away as Brazil and South Africa.

“This clearly shows that Oregon State students can successfully compete with the best engineering students from anywhere in the world,” said the OSU team’s faculty adviser, mechanical engineering professor Robert Paasch.

The unprecedented success was attributed to perseverance, teamwork and lots of late nights toiling at computer terminals and in a university machine shop.

The SAE Mini Baja competition series is sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers to give undergraduate engineering students “real world” experience in designing, building and introducing a new product to the consumer industrial market — in this case, a single-seat off-road vehicle capable of handling any type of terrain.

Teams compete against one another to have their design accepted for manufacture by a fictitious firm.

Students must function as a team to not only design, build, test, promote and race a vehicle within the limits of the rules, but also to generate financial support for their project and manage their educational priorities.

The prototype cars, all powered by the same 10-horsepower Intek Model 20 engines donated by Briggs & Stratton Corp., are rigorously tested. Students also make sales presentations.

The 30-student OSU team spent months testing and fine-tuning its vehicle.

“We designed our car so it would do well in very diverse conditions, from maneuvering through a mud bog to climbing over large boulders,” said Jaynie Schonbrod, the OSU team’s captain.