During the 1994-95 academic year, Catalano taught a first-time senior capstone design class with the goal of entering a student-designed and built, solar-powered race car in the Department of Energy's Sunrayce '95 competition. This course came from an effort to move toward a more fully integrated mechanical engineering curriculum designed to supplement the learning experiences of students in their more traditional engineering courses. In this paper, we summarize the planning for the course, the design and construction phases of the class-especially how students and faculty perceived their design work, the cadets' perceptions of their learning during the class, and experiences of the students and faculty during the race. Teaching this new course provided insights into some of the dilemmas raised when changes to an existing curriculum are made.