Where’d we come from?

Yeah, we know you are asking yourself, “Where’d these guys come from?” and “they have no idea what they are getting into.” A lot of this can be found out from our individual bio’s but in general lets give you an idea of what we have done so far.

In 2008 a team of friends was formed to compete in the Red Bull Soapbox Race in Denver Colorado. The idea was initially to compete in Red Bull Flugtag but with the soapbox race happening in close proximity we just couldn’t say no! The team consisted of Josh McGuckin, Matt Fisher, James Olson, Jeremiah Hueske and his wife Sandra Hueske. The team was a team of doers, we could not just leave well enough alone and as a team that was building a Ferrari as their soapbox vehicle, well, the team just had to make it perfect.

The plan was to make a Ferrari 250GT California Spider, replicating the car from Ferris Buellers Day off. We decided to make it with the body on the vehicle backwards and with a prone driver position. The idea was that the car would replicate the last scene from the movie, crash through the glass window and careen down the course. In the end it was a total success. Nobody suspected that the car would run backwards, people were horrified that such a beautiful car had started careening out of control… till we won!

The following year the race was held in two venues, Atlanta Georgia and Los Angeles California. When you think of Car fabrication, LA was the clear winner so we decided that we had to go there. We needed to compete agains the best! When we arrived in California it was clear that the best arrive. Fabricators from Pixar, Overhaulin’, every major engineering school, FMF, Roland sands designs and more came out with vehicles ready to compete. The vehicles were beautiful and we came prepared. Our vehicle this year was a step up from our previous vehicle with a huge amount of custom composite work done in only 2 months. We built a complete Speed Racer Mach 5. When we arrived our car had great competition, we discovered that we had inspired the build of many of the top teams and we were ready. Race day came and we managed a 3rd place victory coming in just behind Pixar for the top spot!

In both builds the team managed what had been the impossible. Previous to the first win the “Peoples Choice” award always ended up being 4h place. However the team became the first team to not only win both a place on the podium as well as a peoples choice award, but also it did it twice in a row. It has also maintained the position of being the only team to ever receive both!

Throughout the build we have been very careful about maintaining a record of what we did, when we did it. We want people to see all the work that goes into these so they can appreciate what this project consisted of. So we have Websites, Facebook accounts, Youtube videos and Flickr images. With all the posting that we do and our video entries we have had over 150,000 views of videos, tens of thousands of views of our photos and our website and we still, two years later, have constant questions from all over the world on how we did what we did!

Our videos were pretty simple at the time, we shot them all on a Canon G9 and Josh edited them in about 15 minutes after a night of working on the car in iMovie. Our theory with photos was to take the same G9 and shoot everything we could think to shoot.

With Project Baja, we have ramped up everything. Not only with the vehicle, but with our media as well. Our videos are now shot on A Canon 5DMKII and other top quality cameras. Our photos are shot on several quality cameras and the results speak for themselves. Our videos are now being produced by CondorCam. We couldn’t be happier to have this build recorded in a professional way! Keep an eye on our Webisodes to follow our build. Also keep an eye on our Build Journal that is updated much more frequently!

With this project we have added more people, we have added graphic designers, bug guru’s, machinists, EMT’s and more. Our team has evolved and it is getting bigger and stronger. We are always looking for more people to help with our build, our sponsorship talks and our planning. We have a lot to do and even though it is a full year away, it is going to go quick!

Our guys have been involved in the build and fabrication of many things from Satellites that rotate around the earth to race cars, Electronic newsstands in Times Square, motorcycles, furniture and more. There is no limit to the capabilities that the team possesses and we can not wait to have a completed vehicle to test and tune and prepare for the race in!

We’re excited to have you following along. Definitely check back for more updates and feel free to contact the team with any questions you have!