History of The POD Movement

Team POD Movement is one of four Greenpower teams from Chipping Sodbury School. It was formed in 2005 and has seen hundred’s of children develop the STEM skills through designing, building and racing, to date, ten cars.

Why POD?

The first POD Movement car, R-Pod, was finished immediately before the 2005 event at Castle Combe. As it had no name is was entered as Rotary Racer 2. We didn’t like the name so it was initially call ‘Pod’ as some people thought it looked a pea pod or an escape pod. When we were told we had to have 'rotary' in the name (because of our Rotary Club sponsorship), we just put an ‘R’ at the front. It also sounded like ‘our’ said in a Somerset accent.

We gave our second car the name R-PodS because it has two ‘Pods’ rather than just the one, we made the ‘S’ really big just to confuse things and because it looked cool, like the Aston Martin DBS.

This is why C-Pod isn’t C-PodS, it’s because it only has one ‘Pod’. C-Pod was used for the one off Catapult races.

The rebuilt R-PodS in 2009 was named R-PodSSSC in part to make it difficult for the race commentators & partly as it is our Second S Car. It was later extended and fitted with gears for F24+ and then the name reverted back to R-PodS

As for the name Y-Pod? - well, why not pod?. It was also called S-Pod (Sergeant - Pod) for the corporate challenge in 2009 in recognition of our sponsor 'Major Lift’. It was also called Y-Pod?! after a major upgrade. This is the only car that has been loaned to another organisation to use in Greenpower races.

Our next car was also a two pod car, but with the pods the other way round. This was called BY-Pod (By should have been bi for two but that was too obvious). This car was also extended and fitted with gears for F24+.

The naming of T-Pod was a bit ‘fishy’ as T stands for trout. This is because the body looked like a fish from the side. There was also a fish cut out in the brake light.

RAF-Pod was named after the RAF made a huge contribution to all of our teams and also in their honour we painted the car like a Red Arrow. This car was initially called A-Pod because it only had a (single) pod rather than two pods.

The previous car was named POD-SIX. As we couldn’t think of a name we asked our teacher (Mr Brendon McMorrow) how many cars there had been built before and he said 5. Since then we have found our history and so it should have been called POD-9.

In 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown the Greenpower Community Facebook Group set up a short series of Project Cars 2 based SIM racing. For this we branded a Porsche 911 RSR in the same colours as POD-SIX and called it SIM-Pod.

Our latest car is called XPOD, X being 10 in roman numerals.

What about the other teams?

Greenpower started in 1999. Chipping Sodbury School first started a Greenpower team in 2004.

Alderley flyers started on 27th April 2004 as part of the Greenpower and dads in Yate project. Their first heat using a Greenpower Eagle kit car was on 19th September 2004 at the Haynes Motor Museum.

Team Rotary Speed Demons also started in 2004 with a Greenpower Eagle kit car. This team was split in two at the end of 2004 to form Rotary Racers and The POD Movement.

The POD Movement team custom built a car, R-Pod, which raced first at Castle Combe in 2005.

Team S Factor (Sodbury Factor, now defunct) began in October 2005, by building a car based on an Eagle kit, which was inherited from one of the other teams.

Alderley Flyers and S Factor merged in 2007 to become Team Fusion and later Chain Reaction

To 2020 we have built 27 cars, they are:

Rotary Speed Demons
Alderley Flyer
R-Pod
Rotary Racer
Alderley Flyer Mk2
Rotary Racer Mk2
Alderley Flyer Mk3
S Factor
R-Pod
Team Fusion
C-Pod
Y-Pod!
Rotary Racer Mk3
Wacky Racer
Team Fusion Mk2
R-Pods SSC
Rotary Racer Mk4
BY-Pod
Chain Reaction
T-Pod
Alderley Express
Rotary Racer Mk5
RAF-Pod
POD-SIX
RRX (Rotary Racer)
Sodbury Chargers
XPOD