Imagine racing down Boston Avenue in a home made, four wheeled, handmade miniature racing car!\u00a0 Bridgeport\u2019s Soap Box Derby was run on July 25, 1936 over a course that was 1,050 feet long.\u00a0 The course ran along Boston Avenue between North Summerfield Avenue and Success Avenue.<\/p>\n
Cochrane Cheverolet Company cosponsored the race with Post Publishing Company.\u00a0 The Bridgeport Police Department helped to regulate the race, re-routing traffic so that the Boston Avenue hill was a smooth, four lane course.<\/p>\n
Entrants in the race had to be between the ages of 9 and 15 years old.\u00a0 The local champion would compete in the All American finals in Akron, Ohio in August of 1936.\u00a0 No car that was entered in the race could exceed 75 inches in length over all.\u00a0 All racers must have had rubber tired wheels, with a maximum diameter of 15 inches.<\/p>\n
The entire car had to be hand built, however the cost of making the car had to be under $10.00!\u00a0 Some of the rules set up in making the cars were as follows:\u00a0 wheels could be home-made, second-hand or newly purchased in stores that specialized in Derby wheels; overall height of the car may not exceed 30 inches.\u00a0 Brakes were mandatory on each car\u2026the \u201cdrag\u201d type of break was the simplest for the soap box racer.\u00a0 By pressing down on the brake rod with the foot, the brake pad at the end of the rod drags on the ground and stops the car.<\/p>\n
Special awards were given for best racing design and the most \u201cunique\u201d entrant.\u00a0 Mayor Jasper McLevy was the Honorary chairman of the event and the race director was W. Ben Aurandt.<\/p>\n
150 boys entered the race. 15,000 spectators lined up and down Boston Avenue to watch the race.\u00a0 It was 13 year old Richard Moore who won the City Championship.\u00a0 Richard told reporters that it took him six weeks to build his red racing machine, and it cost $3.84 cents to assemble the car!<\/p>\n
Three of the young drivers were injured, receiving lacerations on their legs, and were rushed to nearby Bridgeport hospital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imagine racing down Boston Avenue in a home made, four wheeled, handmade miniature racing car!\u00a0 Bridgeport\u2019s Soap Box Derby was run on July 25, 1936 over a course that was 1,050 feet long.\u00a0 The course ran along Boston Avenue between North Summerfield Avenue and Success Avenue. Cochrane Cheverolet Company cosponsored the race with Post Publishing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":9124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-side","category-north-end"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12465,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9122\/revisions\/12465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}