please do post pics of that one, sounds VERY cool

 

X 2, I used to be very into slot cars.. Great fun..

 

X 3, still have all my old AFX stuff from the 70's, used to whoop up on Dad's butt with my Wood Brothers Mercury all time...ah the good old days.

 

x4 yep. My uncle had a HUGE public slot facility. I had wheelstanders, etc Lot's of fun - RC is way cool as well but sumthin about the smell of that blue or red, probably toxic tire stickum stuff when we would heat the tires before a race........ahhhh better than nitro, brother.

 

One of my first jobs when I was 13 was "managing" a public slot car track in my hometown of 5,000 people in Oklahoma. It did pretty good. That was in 1965. A couple years ago (last info I have) the track still existed in a neighboring town. Can't remember how many lanes, but it was a pretty good track. Also had a dragstrip along the side wall. I recently saw an episode of one of those "buying storage lockers at auction" shows and they found three Cox cars from that era. Two were the Cheetah and the Chaparral, both mint in the box. Worth a lot of money today! But where are the model kits we had? Used to be, every new car had a kit out. I heard one thing that has killed them is manufacturers now want royalties for the use of their designs (stupid idea - the model cars were great marketing tools which kids grew up with and became brand loyal over). Not to mention really nice, pre-built die cast stuff from China. And maybe kids today won't invest the time to do something like build a model - it would take away time from video games, the internet and 120 channels of junk on cable TV.

 

I would love to see slot cars make a comeback, unfortunately they will go with the baby boomers, and the ones that survive will be novelties at best, and museum pieces for sure. The new RC stuff is all going the route of iPhone and iPad. Hell that stuff is so far advanced now(I love military hand-me-downs) you can sit in your living room and fly an RA Drone outside your house, all while viewing and controling from your blue tooth enabled device! with 2 cameras on-board it's almost a spy plane for the cost of a 4g style phone and a $300 toy. I will miss slot cars, I'm only in my thirties but I remember them well from my Cub Scout days, we had a 10 laner with high banks and a drag strip, near our den, and made two cars for the Troop. cars were crazy fast, and the smell of electrified cobalt from the motors still lingers in my mind. Even then in the seventies it was a dwindling crowd of older "greesers".

 

I was heavily into slot cars as a kid in the early 60's, 1/24th scale at the local "Grand Prix" and HO scale at home. We had a club for the home tracks, I and some of the other guys had some nice setups.... mine was fully landscaped like railroad guys do and 4 lane. I also had an HO scale drag strip, no tree..... it was "power on!" start, running 18 volts. Burned up a lot of stuff on that track.

Then back in the late 80's when I was in AZ some guys resurrected and old "Purple Mile" from the 60's 1/24th scale track...... I was running group 12 and open class then. RC took over when that track closed..... I always wonder what happened to all those professional tracks. In storage or destroyed???

 

Greybeard, all of the commercial tracks I saw were hand made, and some are in the basement or rec room of people like us. The one in my hometown was bought by a friend who had a hobby and pet store in a neighboring town. He set it up at the store for quite a while, then it went into storage, then I believe it was in another store in town within the last few years. They're still out there, and there is still a small industry around 1/24 and HO slots. What has made a comeback is 1/32 ScaleLectric home tracks. The cars are beautiful, but not as fast as the end of the evolution of the cars like the Cheetah and Sidewinder from the vintage days.

 

Back "in the day" all the commercial tracks throughout most of the country were hand made and designed and built by ex-employees of AMF. Beside the "Purple Mile" there were several others, "American Blue King", "Black Royal" etc. They were standard plans and built on site so they should still be scattered around the country somewhere....... If not poorly disassembled/stored/trashed.

 

It figures. People who like this nostalgic style vehicle (HHR) would've been into Slot Cars in the past.
I was lucky enough to discover slot cars early on in age (late 60's) when we they used to race 1/24 scale cars at the Flea Market. Ever since, I've been owned & raced slot cars. Either at home or at commercial tracks.
There is a 1/24 scale commercial track at the local mall here in Asheville. They have a couple tracks there. Currently I have a large box of cars & parts for the little HO scale cars & also a big box of 1/24 scale stuff. I had the 1/32 scale cars too but recently sold the lot of em.
I'll post up the HHR slot car pics & pick this conversation up in a new thread as to not hijack this one too much further LOL