Here's the fleet. The "Cup" car and the "Indy" car are the only ones made all from pine. After we made the Cup car we figured out how painful it was to shape pine. That's when I can up with the idea of making a balsa wood "skin" and cutting the block down so we were still using the original block for axle spacing.
A dremel with a pencil wand adapter is EXTREMELY useful when shaping either pine or balsa and it's easy for your kid to control. The nice thing about the balsa is, if they mess up, you just put some bondo on where the mistakes are and hand sand. The balsa is so light you'll still end up adding weight.
The year we built the F250, we had the "Cup" car strapped down to the detachable gooseneck trailer. We had to point out that it was the truck that would be racing. The trailer with they previous year's car was strictly for the best in show award... which we lost to a fliggin flaggin kit car.
