Project Baja? What’s that!?

There are a lot of groups of friends out there that spend time in the garage and work on a car project, ultimately we are another one of those groups. I’d like to think that we take that tradition to a different level however. It may not even be a level of quality or anything, simply that we are willing to really take our time and make something incredible for an event that is totally ridiculous.

It all began in 2008 when our group first turned into a team. We were sitting around talking about how cool it would be to compete in the Red Bull Flugtag. If you are not familiar with this, it is a flying race… Ok, a flying race that is human powered. Yes, no engines, hardly any dropping distance to be able to build up speed and just a crazy event where 90% of the teams end up just crashing uncontrollably into a lake. We became pretty interested in trying to figure this out when we found out that Red Bull was having a soapbox race just down the street from us. Of course the logistics of making a flying machine and transporting it cross country in order to fly it  are much harder to figure out than building a soapbox car and racing it at Red Rocks so we decided we should crawl before we walk.

Our first soapbox car was based on the Ferrari 250GT California Spider from Ferris Buellers day off. The car was our first adventure with fiberglass and it was quite the learning experience. We were very thorough with our documentation of the build and it is still online today to check out (www.teamsaveferris.com) After building the car, and racing the car we found ourselves on the podium holding up our First place trophy as well as a peoples choice trophy! It was the first time that a team was able to secure both! Afterward our vehicle was welcomed into the Forney Museum of transportation here in Denver! (http://www.forneymuseum.org)

Our second soapbox car took our new composite skills up a notch. We made a full Mach 5 body from Speed Racer fame. This vehicles build was documented as thoroughly as the previous one as well. (www.goteamspeedracer) With this vehicle we drove to Los Angeles and competed against teams from Overhaulin’, Pixar, Roland Sands motorcycles, FMF and more! It was an amazing collection of the best builders in the area that we stood against and we were able to walk away with 3^rd place as well as the Peoples Choice award.

After success in both of these races we decided that we needed to build something with an engine. Of course life got in the way for a while and each of us had our own projects that we were working on. For me, I got hooked on racing with Our Gang Ice Racers in Georgetown

and helping Dave and Allison Kern work  on their Rally and Pikes Peak cars.

The need to build something however was intense and we finally gave in. We started planning, we ordered a rule book and we decided to make the dream a reality. When the rule book arrived we began shopping for candidates and we finally found one that really just works perfectly! We are now Project Baja and we are now starting our build to race the Baja 1000 in Class 11. This is the most grueling class there is. The vehicle a, close to stock, Volkswagon bug and it will be racing through 1000 miles of desert in Baja Mexico. We are going to race the 2012 race with a very solid car and between now and then we will be documenting the build at least as thoroughly as we have in the past.

We’d love to have you follow our build! Check out our website at www.projectbaja.com, find us on Facebook and keep your eyes on ML@S for updates, because there will be Many more to come as we tear this thing down and make it race ready!