Earlier this year, three of my coursemates and I applied to the London Red Bull Soapbox Race with a sketch of a giant Henry Hoover — and somehow got accepted. That left us with a fun problem: build a race-worthy soapbox while all four of us were in the thick of our Master's theses.
We chose Henry because he's a British icon, he's roughly the right shape for a soapbox, and there's something deeply funny about a smiling vacuum cleaner hurtling down a hill at Alexandra Palace.
I designed the chassis and steering — the parts that had to survive the jumps and keep us pointed down the track — and worked on every part of the build alongside the team. All in, we probably spent about a month of actual build time on it, spread across stolen evenings and weekends between thesis deadlines.
For something we threw together in a month, Henry held up remarkably well on race day. Here's the run down the hill:
