Building a soap box race car is possible even without a garage workshop and tools. There are kits to make it easy for any family to participate in America's second-oldest car race.
Soap Box Derby Adjusts to Today's Families
“It might sound hokey, or ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ style, but family is what we stress,” said AASBD Historian, Jeff Iula, from his Ohio office. “Today we have a different style of racing families.” Back in the old days, Iula says, families had access to the “Three Ts”—time, tools, and talent.
“It’s terrible to say, they might be great at computers, but as far as constructing things, they aren’t,” Iula said about the current generation. “In the old days Dad worked at the factory, would come home and help. Now we send you a kit, and in four or five hours you have yourself a car.”
In 1934, the year of the first championship, winner Robert Turner of Muncie, Indiana, worked on his car with an older brother, Iula noted. “This sport has cities where 50 or 60 families just go to different cities, traveling,” he said. “It’s really a family thing.”
Region IV Director, Jerry VanWaart, reiterated the notion that today’s families don’t possess the typical tools his father had in his garage. He’s been involved in the sport since the early 1960s, his family claimed the prize at a 1966 Sioux City, Iowa, race.
The kit is like “assembling something from Sears. Now single mom’s and grandpa’s put together the kit,” he says. “It’s evolved to, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ The whole idea is that they work together on this project and see it race.”
Derby Pre-Dates Little League
Next to the Indy 500, it is the longest running car race in America and older than Little League, stopping only during the years 1942 to 1945 for World War II. Each competitor races a bobsled down a 954-foot long track, halfs and quarters of seconds separating the winner and runner-up.
Drivers must be between the ages of eight and 17.
Girls began racing in 1971. Priscilla Freeman of Chapel Hill, North Carolina claimed a fifth place finish in 1972.
“Girls make up 42-45% of the field,” he says. “They’ve won 21 world championships and the only two-time winner is a girl.”
Long Days at the Derby Track
Race father Scott Rasmussen, whose three sons started in 1999, competition day begins at 6 a.m. with warm-up and can sometimes go until 6 or 7 p.m.
“It’s not like baseball where you can drop them off and pick them up two hours later after practice,” Rasmussen said. “It’s something you can do with them all day.”
Rasmussen’s oldest son has been to the big dance, Akron, four times. Akron’s Derby Downs is comprised of more than 500 qualifiers from 43 US states and four foreign countries, not to mention the estimated 18,000-plus spectators and vendors.
A few places you won’t find a race (yet):
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Kansas
- Minnesota
“It’s competitive,” Iula says. “It’s not the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees or Nebraska and Oklahoma, but it’s ‘Why did you beat me? Was it because you put new oil on the axles? Were you lower in the car?’ They tell each other and they help each other.”
For over 70 years, the All-American Soap Box Derby has been a strong family tradition, and while the personalities and talents are different--the same foundation has kept rolling.
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