BMW has designed a two-man bobsled, which will be used by Team USA in next year's Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi and resort town of Krasnaya Polyana, both in Russia.
Last November, BMW DesignworksUSA announced that it was in the process of designing a new state of the art two-man bobsled for the US Bobsled Team, for them to compete in at the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Get a FREE BMW Brochure
Looking for a new car then why not start with a glossy BMW brochure
Only a vague teaser sketch of the sled was available at the time. Fast forward to the present day and not only has one of the prototypes already been raced, but the actual bobsled will soon be debuted.
Not only does the bobsled look sharp and visually stunning, its performance is also promising. We're sure that Team USA will be fancying their chances for gold medals at next year's Winter Olympics.
Stacy Morris, from the BMW Group, says, "The first prototype won't race, it was our first step in studying the aerodynamics of a bobsled.
"The second prototype just started racing... Once we have more experience and data from racing this second prototype, we plan to make tweaks and build a production sled before the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games."
The second prototype was raced for the first time last Saturday by the US Men's Bobsled Team - at the FIBT World Cup in Igls, Austria. The sled was originally pencilled to make its debut at a later date but, it would appear that, the team was eager to see how it would perform.
The team ended up placing 14th, out of thirty teams, which was classed as a decent placing given that they had no practice runs in the BMW sled on the particular track used for the race.
In terms of the actual sled, the carbon fibre-bodies were designed using BMW's EfficientDynamics principles - which are usually used for developing lighter, faster, more fuel-efficient cars.
One of the results of the principles is a unique 'weight distribution to achieve an optimised balance of the regulations' mandated sled weight', in which the shell is unusually light - as well as the sled's centre of gravity being very low and centralised.
This isn't the first time a manufacturer has strayed from its car roots. Last November we featured the BMW 7-Series gondola, used at ski resorts.