When Adam Baumgartner ’10 was studying mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins, the 6-foot-8-inch basketball player served as de facto recruiter for Hopkins BajaSAE, an enthusiastic group of students who design and build single-seat off-road vehicles for national competitions. He remembers the team’s current captain, Andrew Kelly ’13, when Kelly was just a high school student.

“Andrew came to visit with pictures of a kit car he had worked on. It was a roadster, with some really advanced technical elements. Obviously, he was talented, and very bright,” Baumgartner says.

“Professor [Kevin] Hemker suggested I give him a call, [and] I remembered back to the experience I had being recruited for basketball. We always joke that Andrew was our first Baja recruit.”

Baumgartner still serves as a chief recruiter, chief reunion planner, chief cheerleader, and chief networker for Hopkins Baja, a loose group of about 30 alums, many of whom work in the automobile industry. In fact, last Labor Day weekend for the second year running, the Baja alums gathered on Homewood campus to attend the Grand Prix of Baltimore. “It’s great. We get together, swap stories, and then get around to what we usually talk about … making cars run faster,” Baumgartner says.

Today, three Hopkins Baja alums, Baumgartner, Bobby Ng ’07 (who was the group’s first captain and convinced Baumgartner to join), and Peter Cremona- Simmons ’12, now work for Honda R&D Americas Inc. in Columbus, Ohio. Matt Blake ’12, last year’s captain who is back on campus pursuing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, interned with Honda last summer.

“We’re really expanding [at Honda], and we’re working on exciting stuff,” says Baumgartner. “Hopkins engineers are trained to think creatively and quickly, so they fit in here. Bobby helped me out, by referring me for my job, and I want to do the same. We consider it paying it forward.”

Hopkins Baja—one of 230 teams competing in a collegiate design series sponsored by the national Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)—was started in 2004 by freshmen Ng and David Chow ’07. “My interest in automotive engineering really came from Baja,” says Ng, now a body engineer at Honda.

What makes Baja unique, he says, is that the vehicle is fabricated almost entirely by hand. “Everything is a one-off part, everything is handmade,” he says. The program also is student- run, with faculty oversight, primarily for safety and fiscal matters. “Baja relies on the motivation and interest of the students,” says Ng, adding that cars can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 to build.

The group raises its own funds by tapping family members, corporate sponsors, and alumni donors. Last year Baumgartner pitched in $1,000, and Honda matched the gift through its corporate matching program. This year, he’s hoping to leverage other Honda employees’ donations and kick in as much as $4,000 for the team.

Kelly, this year’s captain, is gunning for a good year. The Hopkins team has improved its competition performance each year. In the 2012 Eastern contest, the team placed ninth overall in a field of 105, for their best performance ever. The team also was dubbed “most improved” by the judges, says Kelly.

Each car contains a 10-horsepower motor—suitable to operate a snow blower—that uses 87-octane gasoline, with an approximate maximum speed of 40 miles per hour on a flat surface. The goal, says Kelly, is to design the lightest, most durable car around that motor.

The annual four-day Baja competition, held regionally each spring, consists of numerous events, such as acceleration and hill climbing, and an obstacle course to assess suspension and tracking. “It’s a tremendous test for the vehicle,” Ng says. “It takes a lot of effort to finish well.”

Kelly’s involvement with the Baja team at Hopkins—currently numbering 28 students—is allconsuming. “It is my varsity team, it’s my fraternity, it’s my social network,” he says. “It has defined my time at Hopkins.”

— Christine Stutz and Mary Beth Regan