A record of 36 cars were built for the 13th annual Edible Car Contest, which occurred on Feb. 28 in IVCC’s cafeteria.

In total, 61 students participated, 34 of which were from five different area high schools, and 13 were IVCC staff/faculty, including nine from the financial aid office. The high schools involved were St. Bede, Hall, Streator, Lamoille, and De Pue.

Winners in the speed category were all from IVCC. The Toasted Two car, designed by CAD students Ben Ross and Lewis Habben, took home first place in speed.

“It was a great experience overall, took a lot of creativity,” said Ross, ecstatic about his victory.

However, Lewis said it was not their choice, it was a project assignment, “Basically, it went, the teacher said, ‘hey this is what you are doing’… but we had a lot of thought into this.” Ross also said that he had a lot of help from his partner, Habben.

In second came the Marshmallow J.A.M, was designed by IVCC students Michelle Lakan, Alyssa White, and Jordan Timm. And last but not least came the Green Gummy car which placed third. It was designed by CAD student Todd Morgan.

Although none of the high schools took home any speed awards, they did win or place in most of the special categories. St. Bede teams took home three first place awards in most delicious, most meaty, and best crash, while Hall took home two first place awards in most healthy and wheel-man.

After the competition, the high-school students were able to tour the campus. It gave them a chance to see how their daily academic environment will change in the future.

Dorene Data, the organizer of the annual Edible Car Contest, was satisfied with this year’s competition.

“I think this is one of the best ones we had,” said Data, who is also a CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) instructor at IVCC. “I’m really excited about the quality of cars that we had.”

Data also stated that the students who competed in the contest “really seemed to enjoy it.”

Of course, Data is already looking to better the contest like always next year.

She notedthat Gina Elias, a computer networking insturcutor, is going to have her programming students join in next year and write programs to calculate winners.

Furthermore, she’s looking to add remote watching for high school students who cannot attend so they can send in their cars still and compete.

Winners’ list
Faculty/staff first place — Financial Aid Flyers. Engineers: Kim Herout, Ida Brown, Lori Foockle, Amy Woods, Neil Jagodzinski, Alyssa McCauley, Selena Campos, Isamar Taylor, Patty Williamson.

Speed first place — Toasted Two. Engineers: Ben Ross and Lewis Habben.

Creativity first place — Lich Development Co. Engineers: Nicholas Nicer

Design first place — Green Gummy. Engineers: Todd Morgan

Detail first place — Peeps Racing 2. Engineers: Mike Straith and Mike Kamin

Meaty first place — Lil’ Peep n the Meat Mobile. Engineers: Max Manning and Ben Marrow.

Delicious first place — Technically Legal. Engineers: John Poltof and Seth Ludford

Best Crash first place — Technically Legal. Engineers: John Poltof and Seth Ludford