Welcome to the Race!

Every year more than a million Cub Scouts and adult partners team up to participate in a Pinewood Derby®, a tradition that goes back generations. As a coach and a Cub Scout design, carve, paint, weigh, refine, and race the car, a bond of partnership is created. This is at the heart of the event’s success. In addition, Cub Scouts build confidence and take pride in their own growing skills and hard work. So enjoy the ride!

Much More Than a Race

Sportsmanship - The Big Win!

The father of the Pinewood Derby^®, Donald Murphy, described his vision for the event to Scouting magazine in 1999: “I wanted to devise a wholesome, constructive activity that would foster a closer father-son relationship and promote craftsmanship and good sportsmanship through competition.” As Cub Scouts learn the skill of good sportsmanship, they are better able to recognize and appreciate the new skills they’ve acquired, to show respect to all those involved, and to experience the fun and excitement of competition.

History

The first Pinewood Derby^® was held in 1953 by Cub Scout Pack 280C of Manhattan Beach, California, operated by the North American Aviation Management Club. It was the brainchild of Cubmaster Donald Murphy. The derby, publicized in Boys’ Life in October 1954, was an instant and enduring hit. The magazine offered plans for the track and car, which featured “four wheels, four nails, and three blocks of wood.” (See more info below!)

The rules of the very first race stated: “The Derby is run in heats—two to four cars starting by gravity from a standstill on a track and run down a ramp to a finish line unaided. The track is an inclined ramp with wood strips down the center to guide the cars.” The cars still roll that way today.

Did You Know?

• A fast Pinewood Derby^® car can reach a speed of nearly 20 miles per hour. Pretty good for a little block of wood!
• If a Pinewood Derby^® car racing down the track was enlarged to the size of a real automobile, it would be speeding at more than 200 miles an hour. That’s fast!
• The first Pinewood Derby^® was run in 1953 at the Manhattan Beach Scout House near Los Angeles when Cubmaster Don Murphy introduced the idea to Pack 280C.
• Over the years, Cub Scouts have built close to 100 million Pinewood Derby^® racers. That’s a lot of cars!
• If you lined up all the Pinewood Derby^® racecars, bumper-to-bumper, they would reach more than 7,000 miles—far enough to stretch from Charlotte, North Carolina, to the North Pole!
• If every Pinewood Derby^® car made this year took just one run down the track, the combined distance would be from the Earth to the Moon and back. That’s out of this world!
• Reader’s Digest magazine included the Pinewood Derby^® in its 2006 Best of America list as “a celebrated rite of spring.” Way to go, Cub Scouts!
• No Pinewood Derby^® car has ever used a drop of gasoline. Gravity rules!

Page 59 in the October 1954 issue of Boys Life magazine, featuring the story of the first pinewood derby race

The first pinewood derby was the idea of Don Murphy, a Cub master in Manhattan Beach, California, back in 1953. His young son who was a cub scout who wanted in the worst way to try soapbox car racing which was a popular hobby with older boys at the time. Soapbox involved building a homemade car to compete in a sponsored race downhill. Since Don's son was a bit too young for soapbox, the Cub master came up with the idea of building miniature cars for all his scouts to race. He had his scouts and their fathers together shape cars from wood. Some fathers built a 31-foot race ramp with two lanes and a battery-run finish line made from doorbells and rigged with red and white lights to identify the winner.

Fifty-five Cub Scouts participated in that first Pinewood Derby race in 1953 and the event was a hit – not only with the young scouts, but their dads too (imagine that!).

Like wildfire it grew and thanks to publicity provided by Boys Life magazine, spread to packs all over the country. Within a year the pinewood derby was adopted for use in all Cub Scout packs. By 1955 an official supplier was found to make ready-to-build kits containing nails, wheels and a block of white pine to carve anyway the young builder could imagine. From the start, Don intended the derby cars to be done as a father/son project, too. It grew, the annual races went from being a side event to becoming their own premier event. And generally the rules for the competition have stayed the same as Don Murphy had first laid them down.

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Pack 48 Pinewood Derby Rules