Soap-Box Derby Days
 
I Started building this car in 1961. My father insisted I do all the work.
I learned to use a sabre saw, hammer and chisel, drill press, lathe, fibre glass, epoxy, body putty and lacquer.
I ran the same car two years taking second place twice.
The second year the car was improved a little and had a real first class hand rubbed lacquer paint job.
My third year car (not shown) was very similar and painted blue again.
By now I had my own ideas about how to do things and came up with some unique solutions.
One was to replace epoxy with body putty for applying fibre glass.
The other was to slant the front and back of the cockpit cutout forward at the bottom.
This closed up the big air trap where the drivers back fit into the car.
Nothing in the rules said it had to be rectangular!
My final car was the first of its kind, a "recliner" and started a revolution in soap box racer design.
This was my own design with some inspiration from the Flash Gorden comic strip!
The car was laminated from 32 layers of 1/4" masonite.
However, when we finished laminating the two halves and put them together for a test fit, my feet had grown several shoe sizes and I didn't fit!
I had to add 2" of height to the front end of the mathematically perfectly elliptical body!
Return to biography of Jock Dempsey
|