History Vintage Soap Box Cars

This is cool ,I always wanted to build a Soap Box Derby car. I think I'll look in to it for my Kids. Just my Kids not me at least thats what I'm telling my Wife LOL....

 

I also have always wanted to build one.....I live on a dead end street on a hill and three kids on Saturday came by with one and went for a run....

 

Great looking rides. August 1953 Hot Rod had a tech article "Soap Box Speed Secrets". I will scan the article tomorrow if no one else does.

 

i found this at an antique show a few years ago.

 

Great display of vintage soap box cars at Speedy Bill's museum. Also some at the San Diego Auto museum in Balboa park. A local developer sponsors a soap box race in Bayfield Colorado on the 4th of July. The Durango OTHG club sponsors a car in that event.

 

I built and ran a soapbox car in 1954 in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
in 1987 I moved to Florida, and they were advertising the Soapbox derby. My Mind said "Where". They ran it on one of the bridges over the Intercoastal waterway.

 

The first time I went to see Frank Moraski ( owns the Bell super Coupe...don't know his HAMB name),he has HIS soap box derby car in his living room.........way cool.........nice post Ryan !!

 

my son (he is 19 now ) raced a soap box car for a few years -we had a lot lot of fun !!
a quick funny story- he wanted to see how fast his car was, so my buddy borrowed a radar gun and we went to the nearest hill,near the end of the hill was an empty parking lot that required a slight right hand turn,so at about 35mph my son tries to make the turn and procedes to spin the soap box racer around 360 degrees ruined all 4 wheels ($90.00 a pop) after he got it stopped he jumped out and shouted hey dad i didnt crash it

 

My uncle ran in the 1948-1950 Akron Locals and came in second one year. I won the Massachuetts race in 1976 but of course got smoked in the Nationals. My brother won in 82 but and we had high hopes for him placing in the Nationals but nada. Here is our last car circa 1984. By far our best design, but we never got it to run right. All and all a great experience as a kid. I looked into the current incarnation of the derby for my kids but it's all fiberglass kit stuff. We built our cars from scratch with only the axles and wheels coming from the derby organization. Kind of a sign of the times I guess.

 

So why is it not specifically hot rodding? What is soap box racing? It's gravity-powered drag racing.

 

exactly!! real heads up racing

 

Here are some pictures of my car - from 1976 - won the local competition in Green Bay, WI, went to Akron - lost in the first round to the 3rd place finisher (from Flint, MI) - but won the award for the best constructed car in the world! It was a wonderful experience - my first introduction to working on cars with my dad...

 

I have been hunting a mid 50's Soap Box car for my home decor for a couple months now. Hard to find cool ones that are affordable. Ratherman, that thing is awesome!!!

 

Those photo's are amazing !

 

What a cool post Ryan! Man, the closest I ever got to a soabox car as a kid was a 2x12 plank with a set of 2x4's for axles, shitty old lawn mower wheels and rope steering. Fun as hell though, even with no brakes!!! Thanks for the cool memories!

 

I loved the video of the kids running in front of the racer.
I am going to do a digital painting based on that.
For me; that image just speaks of growing up with a dream.
Thanks for the inspiration.

 

Yikes, it's 38 years ago now that I was a 'counselor' for a group of high school kids at a church camp. I was barely 2 years older than the kids but it was all good. One of the activities was to assemble a soap box car and race. 4 teams, the girls assemble and the guys drive. The kits were all identical so everything is equal. A test to see how fast the 'girls' can do something totally foreign to most of them. My brain went right to work on how to get an advantage. Ever so slight would be all you need. I pulled one of the girls aside, a really pretty girl, did I mention she was pretty, mercy, OK, and I asked her if she had brought some Vaseline. After who knows what entered her mind, she said, yes. I explained to her and about 2 other girls on the team that seemed to have a brain just exactly how to grease those axles with Vaseline before the wheels went on. Put the vaseline in a dixie cup and DO NOT say another word about it. Well, my girls finished dead last on the assembly, so that cost them some points, but their car won every heat. When the others figured out what we'd done a ruccous ensued and disqualification was discussed. Ultimately the powers that be decided there was no rule about vaseline and if someone was smart enough to figure out an advantage, so be it. It was all fun. Great fun. Wish I had pics. That girl was really pretty. Nope, I didn't marry her, but I did marry one of her team mates and she's still with me.

 

This is great topic. I've been designing and building the attached three legged dog speed cart. Right now it weighs less than 40lbs. I've coasted it down my steep driveway twice now. The unconventional steering design works well. It's constructed of old motorcycle and bicycle parts along with off the shelf 10.5" O.D. wheels.

 

Living near Akron I've heard about the Soap Box Derby my entire life. Have I ever been to it? Nope. Must be one of those things that is too close to home!

A cousin of mine won back in the 60s. His dad was a wood worker and they built a hell of a car. I too would like to procure one for decoration in my house. They pop up pretty often around here. Unfortunately most of them are pretty ratty and not that exciting color/design wise.

I wanted to build my nephew a car to race but like someone else mentioned already, it's just not what it used to be

A couple months back I visited Jerry Dixey's Classic Automobilia collection/store in Youngstown. He's a big time collector of Soap Box Derby memorabilia and has some great stuff...

His helmet collection:


A couple cool ones:




And the coolest trophy ever:


(Here is the thread with more pics: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=381715&highlight=jerry+dixey&showall=1)

 

yes todays soap box cars come as a kit, the bodies are made from recycled plastic milk jugs

 

I know a little about this subject. My dad was soap box derby director for our small town of Hickory, N.C. It took a lot of his time, but he did it from about '67-'74. He was in the JayCee's and started the thing for our town. He learned what he knew from Bruce Hearn in Charlotte , who ran the thing there. The track in Charlotte was purpose built and was as good as , and patterened after Akron.I got to run there once in my layback car. It was 3 lanes wide. We all would help build ramps and painted them every year. Then there were the trips to Akron with our winner. Learned about fiberglass, bondo, metal cutting, woodwork etc. at a young age which was priceless, and I have to thank my Dad for that. I would go inside crying when something wouldnt work, and he would get my ass back out there and make me finish the job I started. I dont know what the rules are today, but when I was in it you were suppose to build the car yourself.

The car I have a pic of is a sit up car , I laminated it with redwood strips to make the body, it had blisters on the side for my fat ass. I made the brake out of metal and got best brake. The top of the car had tool box latches inside that allowed the whole top half of the car to come off. The car was really trick but I ran the eventual winner on my first run and lost. The guy who lettered it suprised me with the period perfect graphics as I thought I was getting the standard letter job. Still friends with him, he has been pinstriping ever since.

What I'm trying to say its a good expierence for the youth.And yes they are like building a little streamliner or race car, because you have to stuff a lot in those little bodies ,so you have to be creative and stay under 250 lbs. I remember this scene in this pic like it was yesterday. Tanks Ryan!

 

I thought you would like that, Thanks Ryan. The thing about that look on my face is I knew I was going to lose.

 

It is!

 

customcory
That photo is priceless. Thanks for sharing. Slim

 

Killer pics and stories. I never ran a soap box car. We had a track in Virginia Beach. In the 70's my brother would round up the crew in his 57 Chevy and we would all race down the track on our skateboards. There would be dozens of kids racing on any given Saturday. This was long before any skate parks were built.
Great memories.

 

Here's some more pictures of customcorys car. Here he is using a chisel to carve out the floor while wearing a his favorite roach T shirt, "Old chevys never die...". Also some trinkets.