A functional suspension model is proposed as a kinematic describing function of the suspension that represents the relative wheel displacement in polynomial form in terms of the vertical displacement of the wheel center and steering rack displacement. The relative velocity and acceleration of the wheel is represented in terms of first and second derivatives of the kinematic describing function. The system equations of motion for the full vehicle dynamic model are systematically derived by using velocity transformation method of multi-body dynamics. The comparison of field test results and simulation results of the ADAMS/Car demonstrates the validity of the proposed functional suspension modeling method. This model is suitable for real-time vehicle dynamics analysis.