Prototype Is Better Idea of a Dream : Technology: Stephen Stringer’s futuristic Quimoto is only a calling card for his company. Someday, he hopes it will be a reality.

“It’s aerodynamically designed to get up to 150 miles per gallon at highway speeds,” Stephen Stringer says as he rubs his hand along the silky-smooth surface of a futuristic-looking car he would like to see parked in driveways across America.

But it is not really a car, he concedes as he lifts the front end of the 10-foot-long, bright yellow two-passenger vehicle. “It’s what people in the industry call a ‘mule,’ a styling mule,” Stringer says. “It can’t go anywhere. It doesn’t have an engine. It doesn’t have an interior.”

In this case the styling mule is a fiberglass shell of a car made from a clay model. It is the same process used in the design of most of the flashiest sports cars made around the world. There is also a good chance your family sedan was made of clay early in its life.

Stringer is the owner of Alternative Automotive Design, a job that draws as heavily on his love of cars as it does his talents as a sculptor.

The 20-month-old Maryland company designs cars and components for auto manufacturers and produces prototype units of clay before they go into full-scale production. He also produces clay models for “concept cars,” sometimes-fanciful designs of what cars might look like in the future. They are often displayed at trade shows.

One of his latest jobs, for General Motors, was to design the aerodynamic lower body and front-end sections used on the limited-edition, sporty model of a GM pickup truck called the SST Cyclone. Alternative Automotive Design also made body parts and a rear deck wing used on a Corvette Mulsanne, a souped-up concept car that a GM supplier created, based on today’s Corvette.

When he speaks, it becomes obvious that Stringer is a man torn between reality and the dream of making his own mark on the industry comparable to the contributions of Henry Ford or Lee A. Iacocca.

His more practical side says the Quimoto, the name he has given his car, is nothing more than “a calling card” that he takes to auto trade shows to lure potential customers to his booth. “It shows them what we can do in auto design,” he says.

But the incredible dream--the full-scale production of the Quimoto--seems to be always on his mind. “If it ever gets to production,” he says with the strong accent he brought with him from Bedford, England, “it would be powered by an aluminum flat six Honda (motorcycle) engine.”

A few minutes later, he again imagines: “If it ever gets to production, the whole car will only weigh 860 pounds. It will be like this,” he adds, tapping the flexible, plastic-like material used in the fender of his other “toy,” a fire-engine red Renault Alpine sports car in his driveway.

“Basically,” he says, “it will be an enclosed motorcycle. It would combine the feel of a motorcycle with the comfort of a car.”

He concedes that occupants sitting one behind the other in a cramped passenger compartment might not be very comfortable, “but they wouldn’t be getting all wet in the rain.

“You would lean into a curve like you do on a motorcycle. It would give you higher cornering speeds,” he says.

He explains that the Quimoto is designed so the body is on one plane, the seats and suspension on another. Although the outer body would remain flat and stable during cornering, the seats and suspension would lean into the curve. “That’s the theory, anyway. That’s what it did on a model and on the computer screen.”

Setting up a Quimoto assembly line is one of the 43-year-old automotive engineer’s dreams. If things go well for the struggling young company, he envisions opening his own major auto design studio in Maryland. It would be the first example on the East Coast of an industry that is concentrated in California, he says. “We’re talking about a facility that would be at least 15,000 square feet,” he says.

He operates out of a tiny shop about a tenth that size, with four consultants, at a secret location.