# Slot Car History



## Frank Broughton (Jan 31, 2016)

Wow, read this series of articles the other day: Slot Car History 

What an interesting read...

Exciting to read, and also sad too. There sure were some colorful characters in the history of this hobby. It was sad to read how fast the demise came though for so many of the inventors, manufacturers of cars, motors and tracks.

I was born in 1960 was only 7 - 8 or so during the boon. Any here live this history and want to share your part?


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## Rich Dumas (Sep 3, 2008)

That is a great article, I have it bookmarked. I raced at the peak of the '60s slot racing boom. I got drafted and when I got out of the Army in 1970 almost all of the commercial tracks had closed. I was able to do a little racing for a while, but getting to the only remaining track that I knew about was difficult, so I stopped racing 1/24th cars until a new raceway opened near me in 1990. I also raced HO cars for a few years at a friends house, but eventually the track had to go into storage.
The Internet has changed things a lot, now you can do a search and find all kinds of information on slot racing. In the past there might not have been any raceways or hobby shops in your area, but there might have been a club nearby that you did not know about.


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## Dslot (Sep 2, 2007)

Frank Broughton said:


> Wow, read this series of articles the other day: Slot Car History


And if you click *Slot Cars* in the left side navigation bar, there are many more articles on the history and other aspects of the hobby, though the focus is on the larger scales.

Also on the nav bar are nice historical articles on various and unusual aspects of full-size auto racing, including a well-illustrated series on the *history of Grand Prix racing*.

-- D


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## Dslot (Sep 2, 2007)

Anyone who is seriously interested in the history of the Slot Car hobby also might want to check out the 
*External Links
* at the bottom of Wikipedia's Slot_car entry.

I just edited, weeded and updated the section. The dead links should all be good now.

Cheers,
-- D


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## MSwaterlogged (Feb 5, 2014)

This thread got me thinking. I am adding a history page to the museum web site with links to these sites. Send me any others that you find. Web page not quite ready, will probably be Monday before it shows up.

Charlie

Update,
The history page is live.


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## ic-racer (Jan 21, 2007)

Frank Broughton said:


> Wow, read this series of articles the other day: Slot Car History
> 
> What an interesting read...
> 
> ...


Thanks for posting that link. I liked reading it. I was too young in the heyday to race the 1/24th cars on the big track. I ran HO and 1/32. By the time I was old enough to race 1/24 the boom was over. I did enter the 1/32 nationals at Parma when I was 8 yo and got a trophy for 15th place. I still have the trophy!


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## mrstumpy (Oct 5, 2013)

Actually, I got into slot car racing through an interest in model railroading I shared with my father and some friends. Dad bought an Aurora Model Motoring set in 1961 for the basement HO train layout, and we ended up racing on it! Those cars were fairly close to HO scale and equipped with the "vibrator motor."

My brother and I graduated to a 1/32 scale Strombecker set a few years later. When a couple of new hobby shops opened in the mid sixties, I upgraded to "serious" slot car racing in !/24 scale on the commercial tracks. Eventually, there was a four track "circuit" in the area.

But I got a chance to race real Stock Cars the summer I turned 17, and did that through the 1973 season. Only one commercial track remained by then, and we raced two winters until it folded. I kept all my stuff, but marriage, work, opportunities in real racing, and other things kept me out of the hobby until 2000.

By then, everything had changed! I got into racing 1/32 scale with a small club, and built a small track to host some of the monthly races. The club folded in the Spring of 2006. Some of us raced after that, but not regularly.

I got interested in HO again in 2009 and visited the Columbus club to learn what I could. Before long, I was racing with two Pittsburgh area T-jet clubs. Been doing that ever since, plus doing a lot of "messing around" with other types of HO slot cars. But at age 66, my reflexes aren't what they used to be and all the traveling to races around the region is getting tiresome.

In the past three years I've gotten into slotless HO also, and really enjoy that. I've seen a LOT in all those years, met a lot of interesting people, and had a lot of fun. I'm finding it kind of sad that so few people under 40 years old are interested. 

Stumpy in Ahia:dude:


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