Every team usually has some unique design to display the character of the team. There are tricycles, four wheelers, six wheelers, big wheelers, and small wheelers. The boys paint their models with vivid colors or cover them with macho sayings. The girls dress theirs with pretty colors, flowers, and Disney type characters. A real managarie of car designs.
Race day is usually pretty festive, like watching a holiday bowl game parade.
There are lots of oohs and aahs and knowledgeable predictions of success and failure as each team places their model on the starting line. There are also many laughs as cars fall apart, spin around in circles, or even go backwards because the rubber bands are wound too tight or wrapped around the axle backward. One year however, three or four team cars in several of my classes seemed to go straight as an arrow down the track, all the way to the wall. It seemed almost everybody s car went the required twenty-five feet to qualify for a Snickers bar. Every car also had the same basic design using the same components.