Universe: Alpha, Beta
Story: Cart Wars
First seen: Some time in early-mid 1994
Type: Cart
Year(s): 1994
Crew: 1
Passengers: 0
Top Speed: However hard you push
Weapons: Ram Plank
Defence: None
Capacity: The driver's pockets
Length: About 2m
Width: About 0.9m
Height: About 25cm
Fuel Type: Gravity / Brother pushing
General Info:
A Founder Class 1 cart, built for Cart Wars. Why give it's own entry? Because it's one of two and three quarters Cart Wars carts that actually got made, in real life!
I wanted to call my cart Whirlwind 1, but either I forgot the name when it came time to paint it, or I only had white and pink paint, while Whirlwind 1 called for white and black. Either way, once I'd built it, it became "my" cart in many Cart Wars comic strips too. It was basically a very basic soapbox cart, only with no "box". It had a "ram plank" on the rear. Initially just a piece of leftover wood I'd nailed on, I later decided (somewhat optimistically) that it could be used to "grind out the spokes" of the wheels of carts trying to ram me from the side.
During the early days of "phase 2" of Cart Wars (that's the one without the 6-mile-long airships), I wanted to build a "Barrelkart" out of an oil drum with a closing canopy on top and a seat, steering wheel and brake lever welded inside. My dad told me we "didn't really have the tools" to build something like that. I kept coming up with ever-simpler cart designs, which he told me we "didn't really have the tools" to build. Finally the design was a plank of wood with wheels on it, no steering, no brakes. He still told me we "didn't really have the tools" to build that, and I proper went off on one.
Then I went and built Wildcat, somewhat more sophisticated than a plank of wood with wheels on it (it's two planks and a board!)... mmmmostly by myself. Dad drilled big holes and put a bolt through to make the steering more effective, and also got and drilled the axles, then put circlips through four holes to hold the two wheels on each one.
I duly took Wildcat for a test drive at the recently-resurfaced West Fen, where, when I first came up with the idea for Cart Wars, some other kids informed me I couldn't drive down becuase "A tra'rr gew dewn therr ev'y foive munutt". Because it had been recently resurfaced, the rather-too-small wheels (the big ones had been £12.99 each! That was enough for a medium-size Lego set!) couldn't get over the loose gravel*, so it didn't run at all. I ended up sitting and having a Mr Freeze with a girl from school I had a semi-crush on (but I matured very slowly, so didn't understand the feelings). She was cool.
Anyway, Whirlwind ended up being pushed up and down the driveway at home by my brother and I, as "Cart Wars Training". I had to let him have three goes to every one of mine, in order to drag him away from Nickelodeon on our recently-acquired Sky box.
I'd also made the board part at the back of the cart out of chipboard. It got progressively bloated and weak, being left out in the rain. Eventually Robert came to visit, and my brother fell off the side and broke a huge chunk off. Robert said he'd done it deliberately and, for once, was probably right. Anything for my brother to get back to his unfunny shitty "random" cartoons.
Anyway, with the chunks broken off being briefly explained as "streamlined", Wildcat ended up being abandoned. I got hold of some more random wooden bits (making sure it wasn't chipboard, this time), and some black paint, and started to build Whirlwind 1!
* - It should be mentioned here that, as Britain is a crumbling, declining failed state (yes, even in the 90's), "resurfaced" road doesn't mean they have a lovely, new, clean, smooth tarmac surface, it means the workers spray down a thin layer of tar, then dump tons of loose gravel on it and spread that around a bit. People then have to crawl through there at 20mph for the next few weeks, using their own cars to compact down the gravel. That's what passes for infrastructure investment in the UK. This isn't just down obscure country lanes like West Fen either, they do it on major A-roads.
Variants:
Only one ever made. I made a "Wildcat Logbook", even. I had a fight with some kid at school, and the teacher sent me to work on my own in the reception area. I suddenly realised I'd left the log book on the table, so went back to get it. Of course, that fucker was history. I decided that kid "owed me" for "destroying history", and kept demanding he pay £15.
Origin / Inspiration:
Soapbox Carts in The Beano, The Dandy and on the cover of one of the Tike Tiler books, which I remember said cool girl reading at school.