Slot Cars
November 11th, 2007After my apparently obscure reference in an earlier post to slot cars and the electric smell they emit, I embarked on a voyage into the dark corners of the internet to uncover a treasure trove of slot car awesomeness.
In my childhood, most slot car sets were HO scale and much smaller than the 1:18 - 1:24-32 scale cars and track that my older brothers raced on. The HO cars weren’t as fun and didn’t drift like the big cars. Drifting a slot car as a blocking or crashing tactic still brings back memories of late Saturday afternoons and Christmas holidays.
My older brothers were very into it in the 60s. For years, we had a bunch of track stored in the basement with a green toolbox that held the transformer, cars, controllers and spare parts. Once a year or so I’d bust it out and set up a course. For years I had grown up knowing that my oldest brother had competed on an eight lane track that was still around when I was nine or so and as a birthday present for one of those years, he took me racing. I used a car that was my middle oldest brother’s car, our fastest, but there were tweakers at the track that day with some crazy new tech and smoked me. The track closed soon thereafter, but being able to open up our fastest car on a huge track was exhilarating. It’s hard to explain the thrill of slot cars when there is a much larger following for radio-controlled cars, helicopters and planes.
When I was in middle school, one of my friends had a set that was slotless and had a limited steering controller that let a racer pass another one (like this set). We spent a lot of time figuring out how to build jump ramps and stunts not unlike:
But I didn’t have access to a video camera. I’m not sure if the brand (Scalextric) that is all over YouTube (see) is the same one that we had, but I have the same pull to watch slot car videos as I do for watching soapbox racing videos.
A big part of the appeal of slot cars came from the need that you had to build and wire the track every time you wanted to race. You had to secure the track pieces so current would run throughout the track, wire the transformer (on our primitive track) and you had to make sure the positive and negative leads were wired to the correct lanes. It was a technical feat just to get the track operable. Then you could warm up the cars and finally race. I’m hoping that at some point, Leta and I will get into it and have a set (one of my nieces asked for slot cars for Christmas and received a set that was a blast at a family party) and race. I’m not sure she’ll ever get there, but I’m hoping we can share some fun and she’ll know the smell of high RPM electric motors and melting plastic. o
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November 11th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Ah man, this is what internet nerdom is all about! Thanks for bringing back some memories. I see a retirement hobby on the horizon…… model trains anyone?
November 11th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
I asked for slot cars for Christmas for YEARS before my dad finally realized that I meant it and bought me a set of Tyco 2-in-1 Racin’ Wheelies.
I love that smell.
November 11th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
I love the smell of ozone in the evening… smells like speed.
November 11th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Excellent! This brings me back to the days of being the youngest girl among my 4 older male cousins who were slot car fanatics. They even let me help build the tracks. Love this!
November 11th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
My older brothers raced slot cars when we were kids. I was never EVER (ew, girls) allowed to touch them. But I still remember that electrical metal smell, like sparks and hot aluminum. So when you used slot cars to describe Heather’s desecration of the blender, I time traveled a few decades and a few thousand miles.
November 11th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Wow, I have so many memories of Scalextric as a kid. I was never a typical girly girl!!
November 11th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I totally understood what you meant. My friends in the 80s had Scalextric but I had a set called TCR - Total Control Racing - which had 3 wires embedded in the track surface for each lane. If you pushed a button on the top of the controller your car would switch from one lane to the other so you could overtake each other and use the outside lane for corners whichever way they went.
Those kinds of toy will never die out, I think, because they’re tactile and real. Hopefully someday I’ll get to read about you and Leta building epic circuits and rescuing the cars from an enterprising Chuck.
November 11th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
I totally got it when you wrote about the “Burning Slot-Car Smell!” I still have my 1/24 scale car that I got for my 10th birthday! Talk about memories. Believe it or not, there are some slot car places that still exist; I know of a couple that are located in NJ.
Check this URL out:
http://www.oldweirdherald.com/
November 11th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Now I can totally recall that smell.
November 11th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
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November 11th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
As an expat living in the US, I’ve been hard at work for years keeping contact with England and the slot cars I loved as a child. Target recently started carrying a 1:43 scale set from SCX (spanish scalextric) that is durable, fun, and relatively cheap. There’s a figure 8 set for $49, a larger “F1″ set for $89, add on cars (2 for $20), and simple straights and curves add on blister packs ($15 for 4 pieces). A simple entry point to get a child hooked.
I bought a set for my son a few months ago. He’s a few months older than Leta. He’s wild about it. We’ve since bought both sets, more track, and almost all the cars.
A friend and I are going to start working on a large 1:32 scale track soon, and I know thanks to this small investment, that he’ll enjoy it for a while to come. Check it out, Toy aisles at Target. Big red box.
November 11th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
@apurva - if you don’t like it, what say you hit the road, then?
November 12th, 2007 at 8:44 am
HOLY S**T! This is amazing! What step back in time. I had forgotten about the smell but now it is filling my nasal passages as I write. You must have quite a memory to bring this up in such a lengthy post. HERE is my account of those days. I remember busting out the tracks, racing like mad, setting up interference for the cars to smash into and race around. Then one day, through no fault of my own, a piece of track stopped working. So my dad ordered a new piece from Sears and it came two years later. We never went to Sears again. Thanks for the walk down this lane.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:21 am
I had a pretty low end set at my house when I was a kid, but I do have fond memories of going to a local slot car race track with my dad and seeing the very large very fast cars. I still remember the smell. I had to have been very young as I’m only 27 now. Ah the 80s.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:26 am
I’m a girl, and I totally loved slot cars. Oddly, my 14 year old son had little interest in them when he was younger. Freak.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Melting plastic. Hmmm. Reminds me of the time my husband awakened to that lovely fragrance. Upon investigation he discovered our twins sautéing slot cars for our breakfast in an electric skillet.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I thanked God when I gave birth to boys and could finally get to play with slot cars.
November 12th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I read your post about the smell of slot cars and all of a sudden I’m flashing back to my childhood in the 60’s. My cousin came over one Christmas and held one of the cars down and burned the motor out–and it smelled like the smell you described.
Here’s a link for something you might love:
http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/new-arrivals/stock-cars/index.html
November 12th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
My brother used to get the latest scalextric set for Christmas every year when we were growing up in England in the 80’s. Whether he asked for it or not. Incidentally, my dad and his friends got the most enjoyment out of that gift.
November 12th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
my dad is a slot car lover and i grew up with them. i spent most of my childhood spending weekends at the slot car track and my dad always made us our own special car. i always thought people knew what they were. my dad also builds the engines himself, custom airbrushes, its great.
love the slot car!!
November 12th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
p.s. i’m only 23 so slot car was and probably is still alive and well, just have to know where to find it.
November 12th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
We had shag carpet in the ’70’s. Nothing more frustrating and time consuming than slowly unwinding the carpet fibers out of the wheels of a car that jumped the track and embeded itself into the carpeting.
November 12th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
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November 14th, 2007 at 12:27 am
jon! that video! Carmageddon, dude! Totally, dude buddy bro!
November 14th, 2007 at 12:46 am
That was SO cool! Took me back to my Ford Mustang slot car days. My ’stang was so hot and I had the wide tires on it. I clipped part of the spring on the controller so it was “more responsive,” but I was still to fast in the curves.
Story of my life.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
When I was younger I use to have a slot track, which was controlled by the seperate trigger remote control. What I really liked about it was, I was able to control the speed by the acual trigger. Similar to a gas pedal on a car, but it slowed down as I let off the trigger a little bit.
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http://journalbygarrettknott.blogspot.com/
http://memoirsofasomewhatwallflower.blogspot.com/
November 14th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
ours had the trigger.
and we didnt have home tracks, we went to a place with huge race tracks.
it was good times.