Most children, from my experience, have harnessed the power of the rubber band at some point in their lives. Growing up, I remember flinging them at ceilings, girls and probably a teacher or two, which is why I was particularly excited to stumble across the “Cirin” RC Car — a vehicle powered only by a 16-foot rubber band.

Developed by the team of Max Greenberg, Sameer Yeleswarapu and Ian Cullimore, the design was developed as part of the Formula E race at the Art Center College of Design. Amazingly, the rubber band propels the “Cirin” RC at upwards of 30 mph for a few hundred feet, with two servos that enable braking and steering. “We focused on creating a vehicle that would combine all of our past engineering education with the sculpture and industrial design skills we have acquired at art center,” says Greenberg. “We drew inspiration from mid 1950’s formula 1 cars as well as the truss structures found inside the bones of a birds wing. these structure are both light and rigid, ideal properties for the car we wanted to design.” The manufacturing of the body itself was sponsored by advanced 3D printing company, Solid Concepts, and utilizes selective laser sintering of a proprietary nylon powder formulation. Freed of geometric constraints, the result is a single unibody construction and a web-like, biologically-inspired structure that’s built to withstand the immense torsional stress from the wound band. While it’s a design we’ll likely never see in action, it’s a fascinating concept nevertheless, and one that I’m sure many can relate to.