{"id":385232,"date":"2010-03-03T14:20:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T19:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/03\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1-is-one-whopper-of-a-st\/"},"modified":"2010-03-03T14:20:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T19:20:00","slug":"geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1-is-one-whopper-of-a-student-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/385232","title":{"rendered":"Geneva 2010: King Saud University Gazal-1 is one whopper of a student project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Filed under: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/conceptcars\/\" rel=\"tag\">Concept Cars<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/suvs\/\" rel=\"tag\">SUV<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/geneva-motor-show\/\" rel=\"tag\">Geneva Motor Show<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/middle-east\/\" rel=\"tag\">Middle East<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/design-style\/\" rel=\"tag\">Design\/Style<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/off-road\/\" rel=\"tag\">Off-Road<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/gallery\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" vspace=\"4\" hspace=\"0\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2010\/03\/01-king-truckopt.jpg\"  alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><em><small>We went to the wrong school &#8212; Click above for a high-res image gallery<\/small><\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<p>\nImagine this: you&#8217;re sitting there in your engineering class and the professor walks in and says, &#8220;You&#8217;re getting a little project this semester. I&#8217;d like you to design an SUV. But not just any SUV, one that takes into account the environment and population of the Arabian Gulf. 20% of your grade is riding on it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s right, King Saud University (KSU) students in Saudi Arabia were asked to create a new SUV called the Gazal-1. If you&#8217;re wondering, Gazal means &#8220;gazelle&#8221; in Arabic. Why you would name a hulking, International Truck-looking off-roader after a lithe, speedy and athletic mammal is anyone&#8217;s guess. Still, you must admit, for a bunch of college kids, they did a fine job.<\/p>\n<p>The big green truck here at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/geneva-motor-show\/\">Geneva Motor Show<\/a> is actually just a model, a styling exercise if you will. However, the Gazal-1 is more than just an engineering project. A business plan has been part of the Gazal-1 since the get-go. Are we saying that the KSU kids&#8217; truck will one day make it to production? Mostly likely no. However, KSU&#8217;s reason for such an ambitious project is to &#8220;Promote the culture of automotive industry, to train young engineers who can participate in research and development.&#8221; Those are some educational goals we can get behind.<\/p>\n<p>Now comes the fun part. The KSU students didn&#8217;t start with a totally blank slate. In fact, they were given an existing SUV to start with. They were then told to keep the original vehicle&#8217;s wheelbase, track, mechanical bits and interior hard points. Obviously, the entire body was redesigned. So redesigned in fact that when asked what SUV underpins the Gazal-1, five out of five members of the Autoblog Geneva crew got it wrong. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/03\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1-is-one-whopper-of-a-st\/#continued\">Make the jump<\/a> to see if you&#8217;re smarter than us. <strong>Warning: Don&#8217;t make the jump until you&#8217;ve guessed what truck!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"postgallery\">\n<p><strong>Gallery: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1\/low\/\">Geneva 2010: King Saud University Gazal-1<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2010\/03\/01-king-truck_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2010\/03\/02-king-truck_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2010\/03\/03-king-truck_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2010\/03\/04-king-truck_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2010\/03\/05-king-truck_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/03\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1-is-one-whopper-of-a-st\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Continue reading <em>Geneva 2010: King Saud University Gazal-1 is one whopper of a student project<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/03\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1-is-one-whopper-of-a-st\/\">Geneva 2010: King Saud University Gazal-1 is one whopper of a student project<\/a> originally appeared on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\">Autoblog<\/a> on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:20:00 EST.  Please see our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weblogsinc.com\/feed-terms\/\">terms for use of feeds<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h6 style=\"clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;\"><\/h6>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/03\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1-is-one-whopper-of-a-st\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent link to this entry\">Permalink<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/forward\/19381259\/\" title=\"Send this entry to a friend via email\">Email this<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/03\/geneva-2010-king-saud-university-gazal-1-is-one-whopper-of-a-st\/#comments\" title=\"View reader comments on this entry\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Filed under: Concept Cars, SUV, Geneva Motor Show, Middle East, Design\/Style, Off-Road We went to the wrong school &#8212; Click above for a high-res image gallery Imagine this: you&#8217;re sitting there in your engineering class and the professor walks in and says, &#8220;You&#8217;re getting a little project this semester. I&#8217;d like you to design an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}