Hot Wheel variant ensemble

Here are all of the solar eagle III variants together. Hard to tell the difference between red and orange, but it's there.

Solar Eagle III Hot Wheels: Black Version

So this was the one unique variant of the original Solar Eagle III hot wheels. They painted it black and changed the text on it.

The front says "Brad Lee Racing" "WRF: World of Racing Federation" "03" and "Cal State L.A. Solar Eagle III"

The side basically says the same thing and has long red and white stripes.

The other major difference is the solar cells went from blue (their actual color) to silver (not realistic but cool looking).

Solar Eagle Hot Wheels: Orange

So after Mattel released the original Solar Eagle III single and set, I would obsessively look for them anytime I was in a store that sold hot wheels, or even just toys. I looked at Toys R Us; grocery stores; drug stores; Army base PXs; etc.

And finally, I was rewarded with finding alternate versions. Mattel must've decided to amortize their investment in the original vehicle by releasing three more versions. Two of them are just repainted versions of the original: one orange (in this post) and one red. A third one is black with some alternate graphics on it (future post).

NASC 2008 Vehicle Sticker

The 2008 solar car race was deemed the "North" American Solar Challenge, since it ended up in Calgary. One of the organizers sent this to me, and its been languishing in my desk at work ever since. Too nice to throw out, but where should I put it?

More VHS? Yes

I'll be honest. I have no idea what is on this tape. When I figure it out, maybe I'll post some more...

Cal State LA Hot Wheels Deluxe Set

I had heard, after the release of the original solar eagle hot wheels, that they were releasing a set. Rumor was it would include the semi and trailer used to haul it around.

The result was actually more awesome when you look at it. It's got the original car, a chase vehicle (mini-van) with the solar eagle logo on it, and three action figures all of whom are based on real people. The guy hoisting the trophy is based on team captain Roman Vasquez (actually became team leader at the last minute, but all in all a nice guy); the guy with the clipboard was team adviser Dick Roberto (who later became a Sunrayce scrutineer and still does it); and the purple shirt guy was president of Cal State LA.

Front photograph of the car is from Western Regional Qualifiers at the GM Desert Proving Ground.

Back text says "Racing with the Sun! That's what the Cal State LA Solar Eagle III did...and won! Gathering energy through solar panels, the flame yellow battery powered vehicle covered 1,230 miles at an average speed of 43.29 mph in winning Sunrayce 97, a cross-country solar car competition! Incredibly, the Solar Eagle never broke down once during the 10-day intercollegiate race - not even a flat tire! Congratulations to the Cal State LA team of students and staff!"

Cal State LA Hot Wheels (the original)

Cal State LA is, as you might guess, a state university in Los Angeles. Not known as an engineering powerhouse. So when they won Sunrayce 97, it was a huge deal for that school. They sold shoes with the car logo on it in the school bookstore.

Cal State LA has some alums fairly high up at Mattel, so naturally, this was the first solar car to be honored in this very public way.

The car must have cost Mattel more than the average car to make, since the slim size required a whole separate piece of clear plastic to hold it in place in the container.

When I worked for Sunrayce, we ordered a ton of these direct from Mattel to give out to people to promote things.

We were all secretly hoping that Mattel would start to make other famous solar cars. We fantasized about getting GM Suraycers, Swatch/Biel cars, hell, even a Michigan car would be cool. But no such luck. Cal State LA did get their car remixed quite a bit (see future posts).

The back of the box text says "North American Champion of Sunrayce 97 - the SOLAR EAGLE III is the result of the remarkable talents of Cal State LA Engineering & Technology students."

There was quite a bitter rivalry between Cal State LA and Cal Poly Pomona (who were always a bridesmaid, never having won a major race but coming very very close).

Envelopes? Envelopes!

Stationery is an integral part of any organization that wants to be legit. Sunrayce was no exception. We had stationery, big envelopes, small envelopes, business cards and a few other things that all matched.

Why was "Sunrayce Headquarters" in the little town of Clarkston, Michigan? That's about 4 big blog posts worth of text...

ZOMG!! VHS!!

What is this? Oh yes, that orphan of media format, the VHS.

Sunrayce 95 had a team video competition, which Iowa State did not participate in. But we made lots of copies during Sunrayce 97, and sent them to the teams and race route community people. Media people, too. Good way for everyone to see stuff.

All these schools had great programs. Those Kauai people were cool, and Principia is awesome (still racing) - - they don't even have an engineering program, but they kick butt.

ASC 2001 poster

Part of my relatively un-earned swag from ASC 2001. This is the event poster.

At one point, I had all the solar car posters up in my abode, but that became impossible, space-wise, since there are so many damned events.

The Leading Edge

Goro Tamai was the captain of the winning Sunrayce 95 team from MIT. It was a watershed event in more than one way. MIT broke the University of Michigan's monopoly on solar car wins (1990 and 1993); MIT also had a highly unusual design for the shell of the car, one that hasn't been duplicated since.

Goro went on to work as an engineer at GM (Saturn), and wrote this wonderful book. There aren't too many solar car books, so we solar geeks snap them up whenever we can find them.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Flag Set

Solar car racing has a long history with that wonderful cornerstone of American motorsports, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

For Sunryace 93, we had qualifiers there. Although I didn't get to drive the solar car on the fabled raceway, when PrISUm II blew a tire on the track, I got to ride in the back of a pickup truck to go service it - - I wasn't changing the tire, but I made some solar measurements while the tire work was going on.

During this whole time, we stayed at the raceway motel, and we got to use the garages in the pit area. I think we were in Rick Mears' stall. Once while we were there, a famous Indy car driver pulled up and did some practice laps on the track. So awesome.

Doing any sort of racing in Indy is great. We broke some sort of suspension part one time, and we got a replacement the next day, thanks to a surfeit of highly skilled, all-hours machine shops.

Sunrayce 95 also had qualifiers at the track. Sunrayce 97 and 99 did not have anything there, but in the era of "American Solar Challenge" races, some of the off-year race events are at the infield road course at the Speedway.

Future Posts

This last burst of posting was literally just things I had hanging in my closet when the spirit moved me. I have not gone through my basement, nor through the large rubbermaid plastic bin in my garage, where most of my team swap shirts live.

I don't like the idea of getting rid of all of these, but I haven't worn most of them in 15 years or more. My wife is putting the idea out there of making a quilt out of the pieces of these, which is a swell idea. But in case that never happens, I'm taking these photos and putting them here as a sort of record.

Sunrayce Jacket, the lesser

This was my staff rain jacket from Sunrayce 99. Its companion piece was a very nice Columbia rain jacket from '97 (will post in the future). Columbia is expensive and one of the staff members from the sponsors found this less expensive alternative to use for Sunrayce 99.

It featured much of the same functionality. It was water resistance, and could be wadded up into one of the pockets. It had mesh pockets. It had a drawstring hood and waist. But it never was really as nice as the '97 ones.

That being said, it has held up quite well over the years, despite being pressed into near daily usage by me as a rain coat. Some of the mesh has torn, but not too badly.

GM Desert Proving Ground polo

This is a "swap" polo that is a bit different.

For Sunrayce, sometimes our Western Qualifiers would be at GM's desert proving ground in Mesa, Arizona. It is a lovely spot in the desert (as you might gather from the name) with the Superstition Mountain range in the background.

I worked registration for the event, just inside the high brick wall meant to keep out prying eyes. Our contact at the proving ground was Margaritte, a nice young lady, who hung out and kept us company once the bulk of participants had entered.

We struck up a trade. I would give her a Sunrayce polo, and she would send us a proving ground polo later in the mail. She was good for it, and sent this awesome polo some weeks later. Love that little cactus guy!

She also came by later with her souped up classic Pontiac, once the conversation turned to cars.

I did love this place, and got a nice orientation from one of the employees, who proceeded to take me on a tour of the high speed oval (!) in his SUV, explaining how once you were on the highest part of the oval you could let go of the steering wheel and the car would not leave the track.

One thing I did learn was never to ask for scrutiny. On my way out of the proving ground, the guard at the gate waved me through and I think I made a gesture that could be translated as "are you sure?" This guard heaved a sigh, sidled up to my car and proceeded to do a search that included everything but body cavities. Never will I ask a guard if they're doing their job by implying more searching might be needed.

Sunrayce Generic Polo

The origin of these polos is fuzzy. I can't recall if they were staff polos for 1997 or 1999. We ordered, I think, about a bazillion of these. They were given out to anyone that needed a give-away: VIPs from towns that we were going through; sponsor people; sometimes people on the teams.

What I recall is the boxes and boxes of polos that we never seemed to make a dent in! My apartment in Atlanta had one whole closet stuff with boxes of these polos. It just never seemed to end! I think I ended up shipping some back to my boss after the end of Sunrayce 99, when I moved back to Detroit.

ASC 2001 polo

This one I definitely did not earn, but got just by being friends with the organizers. I only volunteered for a day or two. But I must've gotten the polo in the mail afterwards.

From the 2001 American Solar Challenge, which followed Route 66 from Chicago to L.A.

Sunrayce Pull-over

This stained Sunrayce pullover was given out to some staff during the '99 race. I distinctly remember getting it in a hotel lobby in Atlanta, before a meeting with our Department of Energy sponsors. There was some controversy, as not everyone got a pullover. Drama over apparel...sigh.

The logo just says "Sunrayce" - - whoever printed it was optimistic that we might be able to use it for future events, beyond the '99 event. Sadly, '99 was the last time it was called Sunrayce.

Team Lux from Yale

I got this shirt during Sunrayce 99. I remember one particular team member from Yale - his name eludes me right now. But there were lots and lots of phone calls from him before the race, and for attempting to answer his myriad of questions, I got this neat shirt.

This is as close as I've come to Ivy League. :)

The Team Lux logo is on the back.

Western Michigan Sunseeker

There is an academic paper, and maybe a good magazine essay, lurking at the heart of this next post.

Teams always have swapped t-shirts and other bits of uniform at the end of Sunrayce, sometimes before. It happens without announcement, without rules, and almost everyone does it. Something about the event just begs for this exchange, to preserve something of the diversity of teams, people, and sometimes participating countries.

I got this from Western Michigan's Sunseeker team, probably in Sunrayce 99. As a staffer, I had lots of the same official polo available to swap for team shirts.

Sunrayce 99 Staff Polo

Not very shocking - - same thing as the staff t-shirt, just....as a polo.

This was my main uniform for Sunrayce 99 (D.C. to Orlando). I still wear it to work some days, which is starting to feel weird, since it is a 12 year old polo, older than my kids.

The Awesomest Hat in the Solarverse

GM was the primary sponsor of Sunrayce, from its inception from 1990 until 1999, when they bowed out.

For Sunrayce 97, GM's day-to-day person was Tom S. the media affairs guy from the Milford Proving Ground. I could, and maybe should, write a whole blog article (or essay or book) about him.

Anyway, Tom gave out these hats at a Sunrayce staff dinner, I think at Applebees. It is really just the nicest hat ever. I have never found its equal. It's made out of brushed cotton, which is just the softest thing ever. The GM logo is embroidered. The colors are bright. And the bill is suede. I put this sucker on, and my head fell in love with it.

As we're exiting the restaurant, the skies open up, and my suede bill gets soaked before I can rip it off my head. And so the bill to this day has those rain stains on it.

Sunrayce 99 staff dress polo

Now, I definitely remember the Sunrayce 99 banquet. It was at Epcot, a place well equipped to host a banquet with several hundred people, right? Right. Except that the idiots that I used to work with (not Sunrayce people) failed to secure anything resembling adequate space, despite being a "professional" event planning company, with influence on the Sunrayce sponsors, and therefore on Disney.

We were supposed to eat outside, at picnic tables, and watch the fireworks. Awesome idea. However, this being Florida, it rained. Not unheard of, you say?

The rain plan was to have all of these exhausted/pumped up students eat standing up, for the most part, in the Hall of American Presidents. Not cool.

But everyone looked nice, at least.

Sunrayce 97 staff dress polo

This was the "banquet" polo. Sunrayce events usually have some sort of celebratory banquet at the end (some celebrate winning, some finishing, and some just surviving). The staff got these nifty polos so they could look all nice at dinner.

Sunrayce 97 ended in Colorado Springs. I'm having real difficulty remembering where the damnable banquet was. I remember a wild party at this bar/grill in Colorado Springs. But not the banquet.

World Solar Challenge polo

This must have come my way in Sunrayce 97, when we had visitors from the new WSC organizers. This polo shirt was so awesome I think I was afraid to wear it. Sort of like putting on the green jacket from the Masters (golf thing).

Anyway, when I finally got around to wearing it, it was a tad too small. Plus it's white, so it has been a bit stained.

But * made in Australia* How do you like that? The WSC sponsors, at this point, were basically portions of the government of Australia. So having the uniforms made in Australia was probably a high priority.

ASC hat

Again, let me try to post something other than a damn shirt.

Here's the standard blue American Solar Challenge staff hat, from 2001.

This hat was quite nice, and I've worn it a LOT. Holding up well. Must've been standard issue to 2001 volunteers.