Bailey Cars runs at full speed thanks to SolidWorks software from Dassault Systèmes

Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), the 3DExperience Company, world leader in 3D design software, 3D Digital Mock Up and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions,, announced that its SolidWorks^® 3D CAD design software has been chosen by the South African leading sports car manufacture, Bailey Cars.

“Since we started using SolidWorks, we’ve been able to design and build new models in a shorter lead time, allowing our products to remain new, fresh and innovative. This keeps us ahead of the competition, not only in terms of sales, but in terms of performance as well. Today, Bailey Cars is so confident in its abilities to design and manufacture cars that we are attempting to enter a car into the world’s toughest race, the Le Mans 24 hour race. This would be the first car ever designed inAfricato compete at this level of motorsports” states Gregory Bailey, Technical Director Bailey Cars.

The Bailey Cars company started 10 years ago to fill the need for quality and reliable replica or recreations of the famousLe Manswinning cars such as the Porsche 917, Ferrari P4 and the Ford Gt40. Today, original cars today are fetching huge prices and the niche market for recreations is also growing. Bailey Cars stand out due to the quality of the cars, their attention to detail, and the top class service and customer support. Bailey Cars recreations are also highly successful in historic racing series around the world. These factors have caused the demand for Bailey Cars’ products to grow and the company to realise that there is a need to use the latest technology engineering design system to ensure proper structural and safety requirements, and to streamline the manufacturing process.

One of the challenges Bailey Cars faces is bringing out new models as quickly as possible, which means that the available time for development between races is also very short. Due to the sheer complexity of the race cars, there are thousands of parts that need to be delivered at the right time to be assembled onto the cars. Since many of Bailey Cars’ suppliers use various CAD packages, it is very important that they are able to efficiently translate models to them. At the same time, the world recession has caused the margins in this game to decrease, making sponsors harder to find and labour costs to rise, meaning that the fewer man-hours that go into a project, the better.

In order to address all those needs, Bailey Cars has adopted SolidWorks Premium and one of SolidWorks Flow Simulation. With SolidWorks Premium, Bailey Cars has a powerful tool, made up of easy-to-use functionality that has increased their productivity and empowered innovative design. SolidWorks Premium provides Bailey Cars with efficient automation of the tasks and allows designers to streamline the product development workflow.

Moreover, thanks to SolidWorks Flow Simulation, Bailey Cars has been able to set up virtual real-world environments to test cars design before manufacturing. The testing includes a broad range of parameters during the design process that evaluate design performance and improve quality and safety.

Since Bailey Cars began designing cars with SolidWorks solutions, the lead time to build one has decreased from five to two months and the quality and repeatability have increased exponentially. The capabilities within the SolidWorks solutions enabled Bailey Cars to improve designs and reduce weight. In fact, the performance of the cars was demonstrated on the Bailey Cars home rack with an improvement of three second a lap.

Bailey Cars relies on the continual support from the authorized SolidWorks reseller Mecad Systems who has been responsible for consulting, implementation and maintenance of the SolidWorks solutions.