By Andy Hooper
Slot car racing has been an engrossing hobby for almost fifty years, during which time it has endured wild fluctuations in popularity. After losing a majority of young hobbyists to video games in the 1980s, slot car racing and model railroading are enjoying a comeback, and interest in older slot cars and equipment to run them on is growing dramatically. Collectors pay high prices for cars from classic lines like AFX & Aurora, Artin, Eldon & Tyco. Great toy makers including Lionel, Marx and Bachmann Brothers also made slot cars and track, and these also attract healthy bids as curiosities, and from collectors who specialize in the great names.
A slot car is usually defined as any small model vehicle powered by a DC electric motor, with a guide or pin at the front of the chassis that rides in a slot on the race track. Steel rails imbedded in the track transmit power to the motor, and make the car move along the track. The vehicle travels along the slot and follows the course of the track unless it reaches too high a speed and loses contact with the slot. The racer controls only the speed of the vehicle, trying to manage each corner as closely as possible without taking a catastrophic loop off the race track. The racer can manage the car's speed with a hand controller equipped with a resistor to vary the amount of power in the rails. Some systems actually lack a slot altogether, and permit cars to switch from lane to lane to pass one another. Contemporary tracks often replace the slot with a third steel rail, and equip cars with a small, powerful magnet that keeps them centered on the road.
The issue of scale is even more critical to slot cars than to many other fields of modeling, because broad variations in the definition of scale keep many cars from being compatible with one another. There are two scales from the gold era of the 1960s that are still popular today. HO or 1:87th scale, and 1:32nd scale. Obviously, cars from these two scales will not be able to run on the same tracks. And to compound matters, through the first ten years of the hobby, 1:24th was the most popular scale. If you have the room to run them, 1:24th scale cars are often very visually impressive, and commercial slot car race tracks often run custom 1:24th scale cars. The best 1:24th scale track was manufactured by Marx, and most of it was sold by Sears stores under their own brand name. The first slot car tracks had raised steel rails, like a Lionel railroad track nailed onto a black plastic roadway. Many of the earliest cars were converted model railroad engines, with hand-built bodies carved from all kinds of material, from wood to vacuform plastic. These seldom appear for sale online but draw major bids if still in working condition.
One of the most important product lines in slot car history were the DC "Thunderjet" models by Aurora. These hugged the road well at high speeds and did a great deal to spur the move toward HO scale. These became something of a standard in the hobby, and several companies made engines and bodies scaled to fit Thunderjet chassis. Today, many of the original Thunderjet cars are being manufactured by Model Motoring Inc., and retro-toy specialists Payying Mantis have begun making new bodies sized for them. Although contemporary magnet-traction cars are capable of scale speeds that are frankly ridiculous, many hobbyists consider the older cars more fun to drive, and they continually hunt for vintage parts and cars to keep the races running. Other important names in slot car collecting include Bauer, Ninco, Riggen, Scalectrix, and toy pioneer Strombecker Inc.
Many parts are interchangeable from manufacturer to manufacturer, but also many are not. When entering the hobby, it's best to start with a basic layout made by one company that appears to be the size and shape you want. After that, you can try single cars and a few sections of track to see if another firm's products are compatible. It's still possible to get started in slot car racing with an investment under $100, but some older boxed sets of track and controllers are valued as high as $800 to $1,000. And if current conditions are any indication, there will be someone ready to sell you whatever system you choose, no matter how old or rare it might be.