The vehicle that won the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge was a modified Chevrolet Tahoe named Boss, fielded by Tartan Racing, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University with General Motors. Boss completed the mock-urban course and won the $2 million top prize, ahead of Stanford’s Volkswagen Passat “Junior” ($1 million) and Virginia Tech’s Ford Escape hybrid “Odin” ($500,000).
The name was a nod to Charles “Boss” Kettering, the General Motors engineer and inventor. The win, on November 3, 2007, came just two years after no vehicle had even finished the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge.