Teams

Din and Tonic

Garage Headquarters: Seattle, WA

Driver: Jon Kling

Mechanics: Dave Zucker, Ray Rhodes, Jake Levine, Jake Sprouse

Nuts and Bolts:

Jonathan Kling knows how to boost workplace morale. Just get your entire office to help build a soapbox car! As employees of Synapse Product Design in Seattle, these teammates are used to creating buzz in the world of medical devices and consumer products with their design solutions, and now they’re ready to just create some buzz…literally…with noisemakers.

After finding inspiration in the pieces displayed at the distinctly unconventional Tinguely Museum in Basel this past summer on a biking trip across Europe, Kling was ready to create a human powered racer made solely of steel and music. While his building philosophy may be a bit offbeat, this guy knows what it takes to construct a quality car – his racing resume includes assembling a few SAE (Society of Automobile Engineers) racers. With that background and a little luck, Din and Tonic will be hearing noise not only from its own bells and whistles this September, but from the crowd and judges as well. And if not? Hey, the office still hasn’t had this much fun since Hawaiian shirt day.