“What am I thinking?!? Am I insane to do this?!?”, were not the words in my head when I started sketching out a concept for a small vehicle for racing. Those should have been the words scrolling in my brain, but they weren’t. “Why?”, you may ask, because designing and building a car is no small feat.
There are so many details that have to be considered. If it were simple, then I’m sure everyone would be doing it.
I look back wondering, ”why”, but then, there could be many more complex things I could work on, like a submarine, space station, or a plane.
Oh wait, a plane, I tried that for my thesis year at Humber College Here’s a small story to fill some space to show you just how oblivious I was.
It was 1996, and I was a cocky kid who thought he knew everything, and could do anything on his own. For my thesis I planned to design a small, kit plane that was jet powered.
The design was solid, and I had sponsorship so I should have completed this, right? Wrong. I built a quarter scale model, with only 1 wing completed by the end of the year.
The process took the entire thesis year. Drawing up the design, writing the proposals, building the frame, sanding expanded foam, and many, many kilograms of bondo application. As you can imagine, this was never going to be a working model and I probably took off a few years of my life from all the dust I breathed in. I built a brick. Hell, a brick would have flown further, since this model of mine weighed a good 50 kilograms with only half its wings.
At the end of the year and after the graduation show at the DX, with the help of some friends, it ended up getting parked in a parking spot in a basement parking garage in one of Toronto’s business buildings. I didn’t want to lug this 50 kilo object to my car. My car was parked another floor down, too far. Looking back this wasn’t the most brilliant thing to do, but at least I had dumped the “body” without getting caught. I was a kid, in it for myself. I just wanted to go that day and get drunk, come home and crash on my futon. I didn‘t want to think about how and where I would store this model in my bachelor’s apartment.
That was me back in 1996. That was the year I started this hair brained idea. Notice my naïvety, my youth, my ignorance. Hell, look at how I dressed. I tucked in my KMFDM band t-shirt into my pants. What was I thinking? This statement may come up a few times.
I was an industrial design student on my way to “greatness” designing innovating products that would influence generations to come. Sure seemed like I could too, but then, I had no idea. I was 19 and tucked in my industrial/goth shirts into my black plastic pants, while wearing steel toed club stompin’ monster shoes. See, I really had no clue.
After graduating I moved to Jersey City to work as an industrial designer at a lighting design company. After a stint with staying at the secretary’s house with her family, I found a place with a couple of other people, who I found in the classifieds. Craigslist was not online so classifieds came from the paper. A risky proposition to have with strangers, but one thing that my new place had was a large unfinished basement. A perfect place for the dark room for one of my roommates who was a photographer, but more importantly, space for me to start building a frame to the car. And bonus, only 1 of my room mates was a drug addict.
I was originally going to build a vehicle that was meant for the road, and would have been pedal powered. A much different idea, than what I have now, but I was hoping to build this vehicle to move at city street speeds using gearing.
Would have it worked? That can’t say, but I’m going to guess, probably not. Before I could even start designing fully, I was coming back home to Toronto. I left all the stuff I had bought to build this car in the basement. Beams, hinges, bolts, etc. I seem to be pretty good at just leaving stuff places. I guess it was my signature move back when I was a kid.
After a year in Jersey I came back to Toronto. I slacked off with my savings, hanging out with my old friends in Toronto. My best friend at the time was working during nights, so during the day we would play Playstation, or Warhammer, or whatever. I would eat delivery pizza 9 out of 10 meals, get drunk 3 out of 7 days a week, and sleep in until noon 7 out of 7 days a week.
During the night though those other 4 out of 7 days that I wasn’t out drinking, a lot of the time, I would sketch designs. But because I was living in a high rise building, in a bachelor apartment in Toronto, floor space was at a premium, so building a car was out of the question.
When the money ran out, I was forced to find whatever job I could, and within a week, I was a catering manager.
Early mornings meant early nights to bed, so for a number of years, I didn’t sketch or design anything remotely close to a vehicle. My spare time was on the weekends, and guess what I did? I drank with friends at clubs and bars. So, there definitely was no room in my lifestyle for sitting down and sketching and designing.
I was so serious about this whole restaurant industry thing that I took courses to get my restaurant management certificate.
I was happy for years as a catering manager, until, I catered to a furniture design company. That to me was a sign I had to move on and get back into what I really wanted to do, design.
I left the restaurant biz, and got a student loan in order to get my diploma in 3d modeling and animation. Here I could design to my heart’s content. Environments, characters, you name it.
Once I graduated I got back to sketching regularly. And now, 8 years later after graduating and working as a digital illustrator for that time I’ve learned a lot, but perhaps not enough to do what I really want to do in my life, build a car.
I’ve been autocrossing for a bunch of years. First with WOSCA, casually, when they were in London. I would drive down there from Toronto every so often. I joined HADA for 1 year, and then I went to PITL, which is the series I’m in now.
During this time, I had been thinking about building a vehicle, but nothing came from it. It was only until the winter of 2011 when I met one of the guys from EBW. His company builds electric go-carts.
I met him at a casual dinner at a family friend’s place in Montreal. His company built the “Silence”. They had a contract with the company who built the T-Rex 3 wheeler. The differene with EBW’s version was that it was electric powered. And this thing could move, crazy fast.
The Silence sounded like a jet engine, and talking to Paul got me thinking. An electric Auto-crosser. It was a perfect idea, to me at least. Amazing instant torque of an electric motor would be perfect for the short winding courses of autocross. Coupled with a light frame, sticky R-Comps, and a small battery that would only have to survive for 6-8 runs.
So here we are now in the design state. I have a time frame of no more than 10 years, but hopefully once I get some funds I can get started on the actual fabrication earlier.
I still have a checklist of things that I need to accomplish. On that checklist is LEARN TO WELD.
“How hard can it be?”, are the infamous words from Jeremy Clarkson, next to his, “... in the World” statements. I could be just as off as he is in so many cases.
I also need to talk to people about electric motors since this is an area that I don’t know much about. Electric drag racing teams, and grassroots racers who have built these electric or
hybrid beasts are a good starting point.
So, in a way, I basically am going in this blind in many respects. I don’t know how to weld yet, I don’t know electric motors very well, and I don’t have the funds yet. Really, the only thing I do have is a passion for cars. I understand them, and I love to get dirty with them, wrenching and racing. Hopefully that is enough. Time will tell.
So I hope you enjoy this blog with the progress of this little endeavour. I am determined to do this and with the help from anyone I can get, I believe it will happen.
I’ll see you on the asphalt.
Travis Winch
Clueless Designer
