My Soap Box Derby or old down hill racer . The outer body and the floor were in bad shape , but good enough for patterns , to make new panels . New wheels , tires and paint . Now I got a cool piece of garage art .
!956/8, was 8/10. I did not have a real soap box car, a neighbor had one, gave me the idea, I lived at the bottom of a large steep hill in the city, myself with neighborhood Buddy's built our own box/race cars out of what we could scrounge up from local scrapyard, My Dad's Garage had the tools , some materials etc. Usually main frame was a couple of 2x4's with a 2x4 across front with a nail for pivot, steered with feet push and rope pull, front wheels were the shoe roller skates that came apart, rear same, or all wheels from a coaster wagon. Nobody's skates or wagon was safe. We always built 2 so we could race each other, Scraped off a fair amount of skin, spinning each other out, crashing, Ton of FUN! Mom put the end to our fun when one Buddy got a broken arm from a crash. Another great memory awakened by the HAMB, Thank You. John
Here are a couple of cars that my son raced back in 1981 & 1982. The black one is his Junior car and really ran quick. The white one is his Senior lay-back that he ran in 1982. It is currently in the Caruso Racing Museum in Las Vegas on permanent display. We had a great time building the cars. My son now owns his own High End cabinet shop.
I still have the wheels from the soap box car I built in 1962. Not sure why I still have them. Anyway, I've been collecting parts and pieces to build a lakester to run at Bonneville. If it ever actually gets finished I figured I'd call it Soap Box 2. My first and last race cars.
wow Im glad this resurfaced !!! my daughter and I raced from 2007 to 2011 2010 she was the michigan champion at the All American World Championships and was the National Derby Rally series national points champion also in 2010 she and I traveled all over the country to earn the points saginaw mi des moines & sioux city iowa kansas city cleveland and akron ohio & winston-salem NC the time spent with my daughter was priceless I recently gave all her cars & equipment to a younger cousin so he could compete this year Jim the derby dad my daughters ndr number was 276
New Brunswick, New Jersey on the Johnson & Johnson Headquarters. Annual event & great time had by all especially our "special needs" children who were thrilled.
i found this photo online, it is from the late 30's in Lackawanna NY my hometown... it s right around the corner from where my Grandparents lived....
There is a soap box derby here every summer on Waverly park hill. They get up to 40 mph. This is vintage 1958
Does anyone know a serious collector of this kind of stuff? I have a rare piece that I would like to go to a good home.
This was in the Camera for about 2 or so years before getting devaluped,but its me driving early 50's with "try power" pushers my Siss,Patty Duffer n Peter Shaffer in out little racles speciel
Wow, what memories this brings back! I won the first Guam Soap Box Derby in 1970 and got to participate in a three week tour that included Detroit, Akron, for the races (Camp Y Noah was fun!), New York City and Washington D.C. as one of seven "foreign" champions. I still have my scrapbook, helmet and various trophies. What a fun time this was! I think one of the highlights of the Detroit visit was touring the Chevrolet Design Lab and getting to sit in some of the Corvette prototypes that were stored in the basement garage. We were even treated to a picnic at the home of then GM president Ed Cole at his home in Grosse Point. His wife Dolly and son Joe were really nice people. Little did I know at the time that I was at the home of the father of the small block Chevy. Great memories! In the photo below, check out the new '70 Chevelle. 0 Ch
I've got my dads from the 1940's. The steering wheel is a cast iron shut off wheel from one of the oil tanks at my grandpas oil company. It's hanging in my garage. It's REALLY heavy
This picture was given to me by my late Father...My Great Grand Father (third one in from the left) was a machinist at the Chevrolet Dealer in his town back in Ohio... enjoy
Three friends formed a club for retired Soap Box Derby cars in 1952. We were pretty proud of it, so I wrote this letter to the original Hop Up magazine (I'm the guy on the far right):
This past summer, I spent three weeks building a vintage soap box derby racer that was designed from a car that twelve year old, Bob Gravett built for the inaugural 1933 Dayton, Ohio race. His original work emulated the winning car of the 1932 Indianapolis 500, and would serve as the logo image for the All-American Soap Box Derby for the next thirty years. Gravett constructed his car from wood and sheet metal, then painted it black with the number “7” adorned on each side. I had previously built and raced a couple of soap box derby cars in the 1960s, when the cars were hand crafted without the aid of prefabricated floorboards, bodies, steering, and braking components. I wanted to experience the thrill of building a car based upon Gravett’s design that would accommodate an adult. The original intent of the soap box derby served to enhance the creativity of youthful craftsmen. The various cheating scandals and professionalism robbed the derby of its innocence and original intent. My summer project was a through back to a simpler era; try to use what could be found lying around the garage to construct a car, and just have fun.
The Jalopy Journal
