Replica of championship car in soap-box derby

This wasn't your mama's soap-box derby, or little brother's.

And the entry fielded by Motorsports Management International, out of Mooresville, N.C, wasn't your typical entry -- even for the scandalous Red Bull Soapbox Race held Saturday down Tenth Street near Piedmont Park in Atlanta.

Heck, it really wasn't even a race. But it was a form of competition for 40 teams -- including ones named ANIMAL HOUSE, Atlanta Hillbillies, Barbie Bandits, Flying Ninja Monkeys, Nobody Ups Chuck, Shiver My Timbers and Team Boobie-Do.

The chassis was built out of bed frames, bike parts and an old go-kart.

"Having worked previously at Red Bull, I knew they put on great events," said Steve Pegram, director of communications for MMI, which manages various affairs for some of the top names in NASCAR -- such as Tony Stewart, Kasey Kahne and Kyle Busch. "The soap-box derby racing they put on is a little bit different than the national version most people are familiar with. You have more outrageous types of entries and teams, and it's geared toward a little bit of an older audience."

Arguably, none of the other entries were done up quite in the style of the one submitted by MMI -- Parks Novelty Machine. It was as close as Pegram and his fellow conspirators could get to being an exact replica in miniature of the 1948 race car fielded by owner Raymond Parks that was driven to victory by Red Byron in the first NASCAR event in history. Byron not only won the first Modified Series event in the car, but also went on to win the 1948 series championship in the 1939 Ford.

Once Pegram decided it would be a great idea for MMI to participate -- mostly for fun -- he put together a group of brain-stormers that included himself, Blair Stopnik and Caleb Clark from MMI as well as Brandon Angell and Joe Harmon from Corvid Technologies. They soon decided that with Saturday's event being in Atlanta, it made sense to build a soap-box car in honor of Parks, who was born in 1914 in Dawsonville, Ga., but has spent much of his life building race cars in -- and running moonshine out of -- Atlanta.

"When we looked at the history of NASCAR in Atlanta, all things pointed to Raymond Parks," Pegram said.

Putting the finishing touches on the frame.

What began as a lark soon got serious after Harmon, who would drive the car, and Angell became involved. At their day jobs for Corvid, they work on helping develop and refine new technologies for race cars and vehicles for the U.S. Department of Defense.

In other words, they take their work seriously. So even if Pegram was more in the mode of having a couple beers after work and developing the soap-box car, Harmon was more in the mode of making sure it was accurate in its appearance as well as functional in its design.

"We definitely over-engineered this thing," said Clark, who was in charge of getting the replica painted authentically down to the tiniest detail.

Maybe they went a little overboard on the project, but how they put all the pieces together made for a good story. They scrounged for parts anywhere they could find 'em -- including e-Bay, in the lot behind the MMI offices, home-improvement stores and so on.

"For the chassis, really it's a combination of several different things -- some scrap metal that we found in the back of our shop here, some bed frames," Pegram said. "We've got an old go-kart that someone gave us that we took apart and used part of for the steering mechanism. We've got bicycle parts, including handle bars and bicycle wheels with disc brakes. ... So it's a combination of scrap metal, an old go-kart, some old bicycles, an old bed frame, and lots of ingenuity."

In Saturday's competition, each entry made only one run down the hill on Tenth Street. Then judges determined the top three places by some indecipherable method of time-trial speed, overall creativity and presentation and "showmanship," which included skits put on by each entry.

Pegram figured he had the showmanship angle covered.

The finished replica of the 1939 Ford.

"We put together a skit where we're all going to be in firesuit overalls from back in the day," Pegram said. "We've even got a girl with an umbrella who will be standing nearby in a Dickies dress.

"Because it's the 1940s and it's in Georgia and because Raymond Parks originally came from Dawsonville and was a moonshiner, we decided to go with some mountain music, some bluegrass music, as our theme. So we picked a song from Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass boys. Coincidentally, Bill got his start in Atlanta in the 1930s -- so everything pointed to Atlanta and it all seemed to come together."

Pegram and Clark estimated that the four team members who meticulously built the car spent more than 100 man-hours each working on it. So constructing the Parks Novelty Machine hardly was a novelty for them -- although they insist they had fun doing it.

"I don't like to think about the hours," Clark said. "I guess I should say my wife doesn't like to think about the hours I've put in."

All that's left now, in the aftermath of the big event, is figuring out exactly what to do next with the unique Parks Novelty Machine.

"We've actually talked about putting an engine into it and turning it into a Legends-type car," Pegram said.

Clark liked the sound of that.

"Yeah, something we could tear around the Business Park in (where the MMI offices are located) and maybe get in a little trouble with, just for fun. We'll see," Clark said.