Used Car Lot

The following photos track the evolution of our Pinewood Derby car design, from the time that Nathan was a Tiger Cub until his final year of Webelos. Small photos are links to a larger version of the same photo.

Tiger Cub, 1996

Tiger Cubs aren't permitted to advance to District races, so our first year was a learning experience. This car had hand-prepped wheels and was massed up to be 5 ounces, but no more tricks. It came in about middle of the group of Tiger Cubs that year.

Wolf, 1997

Wolf Father/Son, 1996

Our pack has a parent/son race, so a handful of hard-core dads (sorry, moms, but none of the moms ever chose to build a car the five years we were involved in Cubs!) build cars to race among themselves. A combined parent/son trophy is awarded to the top finishers, based on combined times. Nathan's car again had hand-worked wheels, but notice that the undercut of the nose has become more pronounced, and that the overall profile of the car has been lowered. His car came in second in the Pack and placed in the top 100 (out of 400 entries) at the District races. That was enough to get us hooked! My car was a first attempt at a "wedge" design. Note the undercut nose and machined wheels. It was easily the fastest car of all at the Pack level, although it wins no awards for looks!!

Bear, 1998

In 1998, Nathan decided that he wanted to go all-out to win the "design" phase of the Pack's Pinewood Derby. (This is a separate competition with various categories such as "best use of blue and gold", "best antique car", "best modern car", etc.) I drive a 1986 Pontiac Fiero, featured elsewhere on my homepage, and told Nathan that I would help him duplicate it in wood, which we did. Obviously, it was not built for speed, but for looks. Nonetheless, it placed a respectable eighth in the Pack, and took the "best modern car" prize in the design contest. My car for that year starts to look very much like the final design, at least in the body profile. Once again, the wheels are machined, but just with sidewall holes. Even with Nathan's 8th-place finish, we took first in the parent/son combined times.

First Year Webelos, 1999

We have now gotten serious about speed. You will notice that both cars are now the final body configuration. The undercut nose is still there, and the bodies are low-profile shapes, just enough thicker in the rear to bury the weights. Any semblance of a driver is long gone. The wheels are machined out from the inside, but the theory that year was that the sidewall holes might add drag and slow the car down, so the sidewalls were left untouched. Inspired by the Olympics, Nathan chose the bronze/silver/gold color scheme for his car.

Nathan's car easily took first in the Pack, and we finished first in the parent/son bracket, as well. At the District level, Nathan improved greatly over his top-100 finish two years before, placing a respectable tenth in District. Now we knew that we had a winning formula, and the next step was to fine-tune the design.

Second Year Webelos, 2000

Nathan's last hurrah before moving up to Boy Scouts, and we agreed to go all-out. The basic design is the same as the previous year. Same low-profile body, same steering adjustments. Wheel preparation included both machining out the inside of the tread/sidewall and milling the holes in the sidewalls. We spent even more time making sure Nathan's car ran perfectly straight and a bit of extra time running in the graphite both before the Pack race and again before the District races.

Nathan chose the flag motif for his paint job. The white and blue are painted, with the red stripes being pinstripe tape chosen to give the proper seven red stripes plus six white stripes. The car originally had fifty small silver stars (made from that silver confetti mix that people scatter on party tables), but a few came off during the rigors of racing.

There was never a question of winning the Pack. The techniques we had developed and the amount of care Nathan took with his preparations were far beyond what anyone else in the Pack had done. He got a pleasant surprise when his flag design also won a design trophy for "best Cub theme."

The proof of the pudding, of course, was taking the car to the District races. Nathan started getting antsy about the time they announced the tenth-place winner, the level at which he had finished the previous year. When it got down to the final two, he was happy to go pick up either of those big trophies, and coming in second out of 400 cars (which were the best out of about 4,000 Cubs in the District) was a fitting way to end his Cub Scout career.