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Posted on: Monday, September 27, 2004
Box Car Raceway Roaring Back
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
Until June 1, there were two gravity-powered raceways in the United States: The famed Soap Box Derby in Akron, Ohio, and American Box Car Racing International (ABCRI) of Pearl City.
Now there's only one — in Akron.
That could change in January, when ABCRI plans to open a new gravity-powered raceway in Kunia unlike any in the world. For five years, ABCRI, a popular track on which some 25,000 youngsters a year learned driving safety, operated on city land behind Sam's Club. When the city sold that land to Wal-Mart, youthful racers were out of luck, and ABCRI was temporarily out of business.
"We had to vacate on very short notice in June," said Pauline Worsham, ABCRI community resource specialist. "Since then, we have been working very hard with engineering, planning and architectural firms to complete our plans and obtain the permits to construct Phase I of our new facility — basically two tracks and a classroom — so that we can open up again."
B.C. Cowling, founder of ABCRI and a former world champion go-kart racer, says the Pearl City raceway met its end through an economic reality. But that also paved the way for the new and improved track. "The old track was a retrofit on an existing parking lot," said Cowling, 54. "This new track will be designed for box cars only. This one will be state-of-the-art."
To understand the difference between old and new, one must first understand the mission of ABCRI, and the distinction between soap box racers and Cowling's box cars, which are built to be far more maneuverable.
"The Soap Box Derby, which has been around for 70 years, is terrific," Cowling said. "But basically it's an engineering contest. The cars are designed to go straight down a hill. We're a driving skill contest. We are the only one that goes around corners."
The tracks at the new raceway will be 400 feet long. Box cars will accelerate to speeds of 10 to 15 mph down a ramp, and keep a fairly consistent speed, because the curved tracks are on a sculpted incline. The incline is what makes the new Pearl City raceway different from the old one.
Because the box cars travel so close to the ground, the speeds will feel much faster than the same speed in a car.
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