Many years ago, there was a weaving business in McKinney called Woolenworks. The owners had befriended the owners of a shuttle and loom manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest. They found out that the loom company staff had shuttle car derby races, using vehicles carved from shuttle blanks.
The Woolenworks women decided they wanted to host a Texas version of the ShuttleCar Races, so convinced the loom company to donate some blanks for the Texas racing neophytes to work with. It sounded like fun to me, so I signed up and recruited my woodworking friend Ed Meeks to help me with the fabrication.
As I recall, we had pretty stringent rules regarding weight, length, width and height, as they had arranged for a bonafide pinecar track. But even with the rules, people were still able to get pretty crazy with the designs. I still have my cars from the two years the event took place.