Slot Car Memories

Have you ever thought back to your introduction to slot car racing? For most people it was not at a commercial raceway, it was a home racing set. It may have been an HO set or it could have been something larger. It was probably something you set up on the floor in your bedroom, on the living room floor, or perhaps even on the kitchen table much to Mom's distress. I remember my first contact with slot car racing. It was at about the age of 5 or 6 years old and it was a Christmas present to my brother and me. My brother is close to 4 years older than I am so he had a distinct advantage when it came to racing back then. I am sure my brother would disagree on some of my memories, but this was close to 60 years ago. I am sure he is suffering from the early stages of dementia by now.

I remember it was a Strombecker home racing set. If you are not familiar with this, I think it was later bought out by Atlas. The track was an 8 foot long, 2 lane, figure 8. I believe the track was actually 1/24^th scale track but the cars that came with the set were 1/32^nd scale. The cars were plastic with the chassis being the bottom half of the car. There were two cars, a red roadster and a green roadster. Upon choosing the cars on Christmas morning I chose the green car. This was an easy choice for me as my brother first chose the red car. I don't remember much about our first attempts to drive these cars, but I do seem to remember a plastic rail type fence that was broken from almost the beginning. This could very easily be due to us not being able to keep the cars on the track at first. My brother would say it was because I couldn't keep the car on the track not him. Remember I mentioned the dementia?

I do wonder how my brother managed to enjoy the race set with a 5 or 6 year old brother and the way a 5 or 6 year old must have been driving. I imagine I was deslotting every lap or two. There is much I do not remember about this race set, but I do remember us taking the cars apart to see how they worked. There were two screws that held the top of the car to the bottom. The bottom held the motor, gears, axles and wheels, guide pin (at this time cars had pins that went into the slot not flags), and pick up “shoes”. What my brother figured out was that the bottom of the car was what made it go and not the top of the body. I had no concept of this, all I knew was the green car was faster than the red. My brother came up with the great idea of making our cars be two toned cars by switching the tops or bottoms of the cars. The green car being my car it was not hard for my brother to convince me we needed to keep the tops of the cars the same and switch the bottoms of the cars. Now my car was two toned, green over red. I thought it was pretty neat that we could do that. I didn't understand at that time why all of a sudden the red car was now faster than the green car. Boy, was I gullible! Later I figured out what my brother had actually done....Thanks bro.!!!

A couple years later we received an HO scale Aurora Model Motoring set for Christmas. This was the Sterling Marlin set. I had no idea who Sterling Marlin was at that time, but he was apparently a race car driver.  I figured this out because the box had a picture of him wearing a helmet.  It had the steering wheel controllers and I thought that was really neat. The only problem was these steering wheel controllers had a tendency for the steering wheels to break. This set was where I learned you could change gears around and lubricate the motors. The Model Motoring “Hop Up Kits” taught me you could actually work on slot cars. I still think fondly of the Thunderjet 500 cars from that era. Later on in life I had the opportunity to play with faster HO scale cars like the AFX cars and all that followed. I still like the T-jet 500 cars better than all these Magna Track and related types of HO scale cars with the magnets holding them to the track. Maybe it is something about how they were slow enough to drive them through the corners and see the back ends sliding out as you went around the turns. Or, maybe it is just reliving a nice memory.

Years later we got a 1/24^th scale Sears race set. I remember we went on a trip and my Dad knew there was a commercial track in the town we were going to. He had us bring our cars and controllers with us so we could go by the track and run on it. Much to my disappointment when we got to the track we were told we could not get on the “big” track with the big banked turn. We were told our cars were not fast enough to run on that track and we would have to run on the smaller track that did not have a banked turn. This was probably a set up consisting of an American King track and a smaller American Black track. This was my first introduction to a commercial raceway and I was hooked.  I couldn't wait to actually drive on a track like the one with the big banked turn.

In the years that followed I have been fortunate enough to race on several local tracks that have opened and many tracks across the country. I have seen new racers who are enjoying the hobby for the first time and have that excitement of discovery about them. I have also seen the racers who are jaded from all that they have done and have seen in the past.

Today, I am still trying to out run my brother. We enjoy a very spirited racing relationship, with each of us trying to our run the other. Currently he has a car in one specific class where he out runs me in every race it seems.  Hey, Bro.....how about this, we swap the tops and bottoms of our cars. You and I keep the top part of our cars and give each other the bottoms of our cars in swap? We could do it just like you suggested when we were kids. Wouldn't that be fun to do again?