Top photo: Lannie Larson, left, judges the competition. Bottom photo: Onlookers enjoy the novelty of a different kind of car race.

A different slant to "Meals on Wheels"

by Tom Uribes

Lanny Larson has seen many unusual dishes in his current stint as food editor for The Fresno Bee. But what he encountered on campus late last month was more than ... cheesy.

Larson, a Fresno State alum and veteran Bee reporter of 26 years, helped judge the first Incredible Edible Car Contest held by the School of Engineering and Computer Science on Oct. 30.

Dana Green, sportscaster for KMPH-TV Ch. 26, and Dana Zupanovich Lucka, SEACS development officer, were his fellow judges at the outrageous competition pitting eight student design teams from the critical thinking course, Geomatics Engineering (GME) 5.

About 100 onlookers assembled at the Kennel Bookstore's southeast access ramp to watch Team Omega win the favor of the three judges in the "Most Distinctive" category.

The team's car consisted of a block of cheddar cheese for a chassis - carved to resemble a race car, and sporting thick salami slices for wheels, gumdrops for hub caps, lifesavers for washers on bamboo skewer axles (the only part that did not have to be an edible item), and a Gummy Bear for a driver.

Winning the other category, the "Distance Rollout," was The Racing Vegetable team, whose car consisted of a butternut squash chassis, hardened English muffins for wheels and gumdrops for hubcaps.

The Racing Vegetable traveled 10 feet to win the distance contest, which required the cars to be released manually from the top of the 10-meter long ramp. Once they hit the bottom, the cars were measured for distance rolled on the flat concrete surface. (Unfortunately, most of the cars did not make it more than halfway down the ramp, much less to the bottom for a measurement).

"Mechanical engineering professors Walt Loscutoff and Dennis Kuzma came in to advise the students about vehicle weight and stability, friction forces, wind resistance and especially what they called toeing in - turning the front wheels in slightly so the vehicle would track well going down a concrete surface," Dr. Fareed Nader, civil and geomatics engineering and construction management professor and contest organizer, explained to the crowd as car after car crashed into the ramp's side railing.

"This puts new meaning behind the phrase 'eat your losses,'" said Nader.

Larson said while the engineering portion of the contest left something to be desired, he was impressed with the creativity.

"I was struck by the ingenuity of the students designing a car from snack foods like cheese and salami, or the idea of using ingredients for a soup," Larson said.

"It's good exposure for the university - a leavening for some of the heavy things that come out. I hope the university does more of this type of thing," Larson added.

For their artistic and engineering accomplishments, the two winning teams received gift certificates to McDonald's for, presumably, an incredibly edible meal.