Junkyard Derby Competitors Brave Rainy Weather in Attempt to Claim Victory

Ioana Patringenaru | May 27, 2008

Bryant Chou drives the winning box car across the finish line.

The winning boxcar had barely crossed the finish line Friday during the Triton Junkyard Derby when the rain started coming down—hard and fast. Still, dozens of fans, huddled at the bottom of Peterson Hill, armed with umbrellas, to watch a slew of competitors collect their prizes.

About 40 teams turned out for the derby, which was interrupted by rain for about half an hour. Finally, around 2:30 p.m., in the last round, the Programmers, a group of computer science students, triumphed over the Junkyard Dogs.

“We wanted to come out and show we could have fun,” said Bryant Chou, who drove the team’s boxcar to victory.

The vehicle was made from a broken treadmill, old bike parts, a heating duct, a broken classroom chair and some scrap metal. It was built with good engineering principles in mind, Chou said. “We showed it could go fast,” he added. They also showed it could withstand gusts of rain and wind.

The Programmers pose for a group picture.

It was the Programmers’ first year in the competition and Chou said he hoped they would be able to come back and defend their title. They are all seniors headed to various destinations after graduation. Chou is going to Mountain View, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he will work for Intuit.

The Triton Junkyard Derby is a three-day event based on the popular "Junkyard Wars," on The Learning Channel. Teams went through heaps of “junk” Wednesday to find building materials. Then they worked feverishly to assemble their box cars, with the help of welders from a UCSD machine shop. Finally, they raced their vehicles Friday, in a bid to find the fastest car, the most creative car and the car with the best theme.

The Programmers shared the glory with Team Spaceship, which won the best theme award, and with The Force of Groovity, which won for the most ingenious use of junk. Judges included Vice Chancellor Penny Rue, Tracie Davee, one of the derby’s founders and the assistant dean of student affairs at Warren College, Liora Kian-Gutierrez, an assistant dean at Revelle, Dale Masterson, director of Student Engineering Services at the Jacobs School and Vlado Lubarda, an engineering professor.

A fairly big crowd turned out in spite of the rain.

The winning boxcar will be stored in the library and others will be recycled, Mounzer said. Winners received a framed $100 bill with the derby’s logo. Their names also were engraved on the event’s trophy.

The three teams bested a field of about 40, as the Triton Engineering Student Council decided this year to lift limits on the numbers of competitors that could register for the event. That yielded 15 more teams when compared to last year, said Jeff Mounzer, the council’s former president and one of the event’s organizers. “It keeps growing,” he said of the derby.

In addition to the large number of teams, crowds also turned out Friday, in spite of the rain. A free barbeque and raffles with about $1,000 worth of prizes, including a Nintendo Wii console, helped, Mounzer said. “Everyone seemed to have a pretty good time,” he added, though he conceded that the rain wasn’t helpful. But his spirits were still up.

You know what? We survived,” he said.