For optimal design of mechanical clinching steel-aluminum joints, the back propagation (BP) neural network is used to research the mapping relationship between joining technique parameters including sheet thickness, sheet hardness, joint bottom diameter etc., and mechanical properties of shearing and peeling in order to investigate joining technology between various material plates in the steel-aluminum hybrid structure car body. Genetic algorithm (GA) is adopted to optimize the back-propagation neural network connection weights. The training and validating samples are made by the BTM(R) Tog-L-Loc system with different technologic parameters. The training samples parameters and the corresponding joints mechanical properties are supplied to the artificial neural network (ANN) for training. The validating samples experimental data is used for checking up the prediction outputs. The calculation results show that GA can improve the models prediction precision and generalization ability of BP neural network. The comparative analysis between the experimental data and the prediction outputs shows that ANN prediction models after training can effectively predict the mechanical properties of mechanical clinching joints and prove the feasibility and reliability of the intelligent neural networks system when used in the mechanical properties prediction of mechanical clinching joints. The prediction results can be used for a reference in the design of mechanical clinching steel-aluminum joints.