Doraemon / Soraemon solar powered car model

Doraemon is a Japanese cartoon character who is a robotic cat. As a promotional stunt, an actual solar-powered car that looked like Doraemon was built, and dubbed "Soraemon" and then entered into a smaller solar car race in Japan (The Grand Solar Challenge, on the beach in Noto).

I bought this Tamiya model of Soraemon when I was in Japan. It has an actual solar panel on it and an electric motor that will move it in sunlight. I did a crappy job of painting it, but had fun doing it so I guess that's something. This isn't really a great photo...I'll post better photos later.

Principia team polo from Sunrayce 99

Principia College is a small school in southern Illinois, with a Christian bent to it. They lack an engineering school, but entered Sunrayce nonetheless, and have continually improved with every passing event.

My alma mater (Iowa State) developed a close relationship with them. During Sunrayce 95, they blew out their only motor, effectively ending the race. We had a spare motor, and loaned it to them (at some risk to our own project). They were very grateful, and gave us a fruit basket at the finish line. The next year, when our team had a catastrophic pre-race accident, Principia helped us out.

Their polo shirts are pretty awesome.

Sunrayce 95 squeeze bottle

This was a squeeze bottle given out during Sunrayce 95 by event sponsor EDS (?). Of course, GM had already bought part of Hughes holdings (which had led to the creation of the GM Sunraycer, which started the whole danged US solar car racing thing off) - - so maybe this bottle was from GM? At either rate there it is.

The text says "Sunrayce 95. Digital from Day One - Hughes Network System"

Now that I'm looking at this, it may have something to do with our chase vans that year. Sunrayce 95 was the last year that the race sponsors provided one chase van for each participating team. It was a Chevy Beauville. It was equipped, that year, with some radical technology - - an early version of GPS navigation. The radios could tell you how far away (and in what direction) you were from certain waypoints. Additionally, they were rigged to broadcast their location to a central point. The positions were then posted to a website so people could track where the chase vans were (and, by extension, where the solar cars were). Pretty cool, overall.

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?