Brown University engineering student Roto Le works on an edible car.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

PROVIDENCE The ear-splitting cackle of powerful engines was absent as students prepared their cars for the race at Brown University’s School of Engineering Thursday evening.

That’s because there were no powerful engines to cackle.

Instead, the 12 teams had an hour to make cars out of nothing but food — chassis, axles and wheels, let alone adhesives, lubricants and spoilers.

The challenge to make an edible car was organized by XSPEC, or the Xtreme Special Event Committee, headed by engineering junior Julie Sygiel. She said the group organized an extreme gingerbread building competition last semester and debated Lego building and paper airplane building before deciding on edible cars for this event.

She said she got the idea from the University of Kentucky when she competed in a similar competition for a couple of years while in middle school in the Bluegrass State.

She said she placed third in the second year after substituting rice cake wheels for donut wheels that fell to bits under the enormous strain.

“There are two aspects to this challenge,” Sygiel announced to the eager but nervous crowd before sounding the nonexistent gun to start the proceedings. “It’s entertaining and the cars are biodegradable.”

Indeed, she said there would be two bins to take the remnants of the racers — one for grains, which would be made into ethanol, and one for everything else, which would be made into compost.

She reiterated the entries had to be edible and have rotating wheels; each would have two chances to descend a sloping ramp with the goal of rolling the farthest. The entries would also be judged on appearance.

Finally she announced that Dean of Engineering Gregory Crawford had offered to give $1 to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank for every foot covered by the various vehicles.

At a table nearby, Sara Berlund, Karen Dannemiller and Vivette Elfawal were on hand to give out various foods to the unprepared, including the aforementioned rice cakes, corn on the cob, oranges, potatoes, Oreos and eggplants.

JD’s Team, which came in second, was perhaps the most international, with grad students Elif Alpaslan from Turkey, Yiwen Shi from China and Stella Hu from Taiwan debating a couple of plans involving zucchinis, hard-boiled eggs, eggplants and oranges but it was not clear in which order, let alone what role. Some toothpicks also seemed very eager to make a contribution, and one supposes they straddle the line between edible and inedible.

The team behind Squashaurus Rex was pretty serious. They had already tested their squash-turnip wheel-carrot axle theory and were confident of their findings. “It’s pretty simple,” said grad student and evident team leader Tom Grimsley. “It all depends on mass and inertia.” The team was filled out by seniors Ruth Ophardt, Corynn Brodky, Keisha Carlson and Noah “My name is very long” Stephens-Davidowitz.

An unnamed team of seniors Michael Huang, May Mark and Mai Denawa was betting on a squash chassis but debating the relative merits of wheels made of oranges or grapefruit. What were they going to use for axles?

Close by, darker motivations were at work. Sophmores Al Urim and Dirob Malek-Madani said they were still burning over coming in third in last semester’s gingerbread house building competition. They said they should have come in second and were hoping for vindication with their entry, Sweet Team, made of a zucchini chassis, carrot axles and rice cake wheels with peanut butter adhesive.

Tragically, they had forgotten the olive oil that was to have served as the lubricant propelling them to inevitable victory.

Lubricant was going to come the natural way for the Hard Meat team, or “the frozenality” of “a solid–state turkey,” according to arts junior John Szymanksi, who was standing over a frozen turkey and preparing to drill holes for the candy cane axles. Indeed, all the members of this team, which was filled out by Sabine Zimmer, Ben Stark and Caroline Calkins, were from the School of Arts and Humanities.

Was Szymanksi going to leave that inedible plastic wrapping on the turkey? Would that be kosher? But would “the frozenality” of the turkey hold it together if the wrapping came off? Too much suspense for one confused and frightened reporter.

In the end it did come off, and a head with a beak and startled expression was added but it is debatable whether this added to Hard Meat’s speed.

Back to engineering and the team that came in third, seniors Ky Krieger, Aaron Mandle and Bryant Mairs, Luke Angelini and Jon Reid with their Bagel Mobile. Its cucumber chassis (complete with carved racing stripes), candy cane axles and frozen you-know-what wheels served them well. Marshmallows were deployed to keep the wheels on the car. A nice extra touch was the spoiler carved out of carrots that kept this rocket hugging the track.

Then there was the unnamed ringer in the form of Prof. Bill Curtin and his son, Peter, aged 6. Candy was a major ingredient of their car, with giant candy wheels and candy axles and candy things-that-the-axles-go- through that Peter was making with great concentration.

Professor Curtain, meanwhile, was girding himself to drill a hole through one of the candy wheels. The car was already destined to be a 3-wheeler as one candy wheel had shattered under the pressure of the competition or media attention, or possibly both.

The Veggie-Mon (as in Jamaica-Mon) team had decided on water from the veggies for a lubricant, but disaster had struck early when the squash they had intended to use as wheels had turned out to be hollow, making axles problematic – although it had served as a good snack, according to team member Jeanine Pollard. Then they blew right through the eggplant instead of creating simple holes for the axles. Now Pollard and partners Jordan Chesin and John Voorhees were down to desperate improvising.

In the end, the checkered flag went to engineering junior Andy Nager and out-of-town guests Ned Devereux, Kate Ditzlerand Stuart Gasner whose car rolled 207 inches from the end of the ramp. It consisted of an Oreo front wheel, grapefruit back wheel and rice cake training wheels, two carrots for the body, and axles of fettuccini.

An extreme design for an Xtreme challenge.

Congratulations to all!

You can see aslideshowofBrownUniversity’sEdibleCarCompetitioncarsandtheircreators,andamultimediapresentation,at projocars.com

pelsworth@projo.com