I spotted the racing car as soon as I turned the corner. Its slender body, low to the floor, took up a large block of space inside the frame of a mattress-less bed. Its orange and green color, and yellow stripe stood out against the dark mahogany of the antique furniture around it at the auction house.
At first, I wasn’t sure what kind of racer it was – a go-cart perhaps? – because the only racing cars I’d glimpsed on TV or magazines lately were the fuel-powered cars of Nascar. This one, though, was obviously human-powered and had some age on it.
It was actually a soapbox derby car, and likely someone had made it by hand from a kit. I later wondered about its story – who had made it, who had raced in it and when, who had given it up. Had it raced locally or participated in the official All American Soap Box Derby held yearly in Akron, OH, and won? I assumed it was a child’s racer, but I could have been wrong because adults get deep into this sport, too.
Soapbox racing seems to be a summer pastime in many communities across the country and the world. It appears to be serious business and a lot of fun (as seen in this video), fueled solely by gravity and a driver’s ability to handle the car as he/she hunched inside it. I found city after city with its own derby, some connected to the All American organization.
The sport (also called gravity racing) got its start in Dayton, OH. A newspaper man named Myron Scott in 1933 or 1934 (depending on who you read) came upon a group of boys racing handmade cars down a hill. Scott asked the boys to return the next week, offering to formalize their game. He later held a derby with 362 children who arrived with cars built from milk crates and discarded wood sitting atop makeshift wheels. Here’s a Time magazine photo gallery of the sport through the years.
Soapbox racing became a popular sport, with even Norman Rockwell offering a comic illustration on the Jan. 9, 1926, cover of the Saturday Evening Post of a boy speeding seemingly out of control in his car. Its heyday was the 1940s through 1960s, when millions of people turned out to see the races. Back then, it was truly a boy’s sport; girls were not allowed in the All-American derby race until the 1970s.
The Smithsonian Institution has two soapbox cars in its collection: A boy’s car that won the All-American in 1961 and the other built by a girl who finished fourth in the 1995 race.
Kids are not the only ones partaking of the sports. At the PDX Soapbox Derby in Portland, OR, adults compete by driving down the slopes of Mount Tabor. In the Red Bull Soapbox Race, amateur drivers turn up in cars as wild as their imaginations: baby carriage, jail cell, Golden Gate Bridge and a piano. Some even show up in costumes.
After decades, interest in soap-box racing was beginning to diminish, and organizers looked for ways to revive it. The All-American invited high-tech cars to participate. The Extreme Gravity Series attracted teams of designers who created their own innovative cars, with speeds up to 50 miles per hour (the children’s cars were much less). That race rivaled a soapbox derby in Scotland that on its website boasted speeds of up to 60 miles per hour.
The car at auction obviously couldn’t match those speeds, but it was a looker. Its cuteness grabbed me.
