| Well, my son wanted his PWD car to look like dad's. Here's the follow up to my post a month ago: La-Z-Link cliff notes if you just want the result and look at the pictures:
Kid won his Den heats with a 'back up' wedge car because the Z32 didn't meet the rulebook.
Kid won outlaw the the Z32 PWD car and set a track record (only for the day or history of the track, not sure yet). Go Z32!! Enjoy the photos... First off, this was a balancing act with kiddo. In order to make the car look like dad's without making it unrecognizable to the trained eye (you) we had to make some compromises. I figured we would be in violation of some BSA rule to make this work, and I was correct. To have a good day I ended up building 2 cars for the event. The Z32 and a back up simple wedge car so we knew we had something legal to run in his heats. I'm glad I did, because as a parent I would have put kiddo in a bad place with the Z32 since it would have been eligible to advance to District racing from the Pack but wouldn't be legal at that level of competition... squashing his dreams of world PWD domination. Sorry, sporto! So the first decision was the one that determined the cars fate as an 'outlaw car'. In order to make it look right, the wheelbase had to be shortened. BSA doesn't allow this, so the backup car became a must. 
laying out the cut
I have all sorts of metal working stuff in my garage except a bandsaw. Had to have a friend of mine who builds guitars help a brother out to get a nice cut.
Basic shaping
My son did actually do work on both cars by painting and drilling axle holes. I spent more time running around for paint and whatnot than actually building the car.
I'm going to skip the 'speed' process here and get to the candy. Like most hobbies there is a fringe that takes it way to serious. The internet is full of stuff to do to make your car 'fast'. A lot of it is crap, you can figure out the smart guys pretty quick. There are some amazing designs my son and I will tackle over the coming years. If you're studying this for the same reason most of the info I got was just from watching youtube this time around. Printed information goes on for years and I'm too lazy to read all of that. I did what I thought would be routine tricks, and apparently it worked out OK for us. Your mileage may vary! 
Blue basecoat. None of the greens I found initially looked right. I figured I'd have to 'mix' my own to get it close with blue under the green.
Amazingly, it worked out to be very like Cobalt Green Pearl!
The final product! I like the 'toy' look with the wheels sticking out the sides. Like wooden toys from my youth... but highly polished and designed to dominate!
So his wedge car had an average of like scale 160mph for his heat. I don't remember the exact number. I felt pretty good about that. The average for the Webelos (4th graders) heat winner was up to 169. We have a ways to go on standard design. I spent more time on 'tuning' the Z32 than the wedge. Both have similar tricks applied. It won the outlaw class and ran scale 168 with 171 top trap speed. It also won grudge matches after the track was closed and remains undefeated! I have reclaimed the Z32 as mine and it will be enshrined with my other Z32 stuff in a place of prominence. I can't wait for kiddo to get old enough to go to the track and eventually participate in motorsports with dear ol' dad!
Later
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Z32 Pinewood Derby Car - 
