So quick background notes, my introduction to Slot Cars was in 1967 at a hobby shop in Santa Maria, California. In front was the hobby shop and in back was a huge custom built track. I was amazed and captured by what I saw that day as it was nothing like the little electric car sets that we all had at home. Fast forward to 1972 and I am graduating High School and my folks have decided to move to Alice Springs Australia. (Netflicks - "Pine Gap") We had followed my step father from one military base to another all my life and I was done, so I decided to stay and share an apartment with a friend from high school. I found work at a place called MAC in Costa Mesa California. I should mention here that from 1969 to 1972 I had raced every Monday night at a local track in Buena Park California known as Monaco Miniatures. I was asked the other day by a friend at work, that looking back was there a time in life I would want to go back to and at first I said no, but the question lingered and the next day it came to me that those Monday evening races brought more excitement and joy than any other point in my life, who knew. I mention all this minutia to bring forward how important slot cars were at the time to me, even though now looking back I was obviously ten to fifteen years too late to the party and to start to tell the story of Monaco and Outisight and how important they were even into the slot car racing picture of the seventies.
I do not recall the name of the owner of the Orange track we raced on at Monaco when I first started racing there, but like the men that built the track in Santa Maria I believe they were from the slot car craze of the early sixties who simply got in too late, thankfully for me they did anyway. This was where I met the subject of this short story, one Mr. Frank Pretzman and his son Billy. Frank loved his son and was so very proud of him, we would see each other every Monday for years and over time built a friendship. However by 1972 I needed to work to pay the rent and slot car racing took a bit of a back seat. Did I mention MAC was my first real nine to five job, with Barry Crowe, and Johnny and Lloyd all working in the slot car business, my dream job right? Barry was an engine builder from England and my first day on the job I had to find space in my section of the building to work because he had parked a Chaparral, the "vacuum" car inside my work area. Lets not get side tracked here, Johnny was the "engineer" who built the vacuum forming machine they bought from Lancer Bodies and all the "trimming" machines and Lloyd, well Lloyd was the mold maker. I was their first full time employee so Lloyd showed me everything, how to run the machine, what temperature to heat the body molds up to and how hot to get the lexan for the very best and cleanest body "pull". How he would start with a general body shape and make it into something else and then cast it in this red rubber, that got everywhere, truly you would find it days later in places you never thought to clean. Finally that mold would yield a gray epoxy mold that Lloyd work on for days to get just right. His ability to "scribe" lines and make the lump of gray epoxy into the shape of a race car was amazing, never saw anyone better. Did I mention that every now and then a "Crazy Frenchman" named Phillippe de Lespinay would pop in and spend a couple hours talking to the owners. I was still very young at heart and I admired them all as they were involved in racing at several different levels and they were doing the things I wanted to be doing at the time. However they too had gotten into the world of Slot Car racing much too late and after just a few years MAC was sold to Ken of Parma fame. I honestly never forgave Ken for taking my life away from me and moving the company to some far away place in the land of Ohio I believe, just to make money.
Okay so what does all this have to do with Frank and Monaco you might be asking. Well while I had been working the man that owned Monaco finally saw the writing on the wall and he wanted out. That is when Frank stepped in and bought the shop, I am not sure why as I doubt it made him any money, but he had his own profession during the day and he and his son had the hobby shop the rest of the time. As for me, well when MAC came to an end I needed another job and I kicked around for a while without any success at least nothing like what I had at MAC and in the end I decided to do as my folks wanted and go back to school. They paid a bit but not enough to live on and go to school and Frank was kind enough to take me in. He gave me a job after school and he and Joan, his wife, became my surrogate mom and dad.
Frank and Billy ran the shop and held races and eventually became aware of the USRA local slot car racing events, which both Billy and I attended with a slight bit of success until a gentleman name Hexler came in one day. I think he might have been a part of the slot car craze in the mid sixties as he had speed and designs that were faster than ours from his first time on the track. I am skipping ahead here in hopes you folks reading this do not fall asleep asking where is Outisight Designs in all this. Please have faith it is coming. Mr. Hexler became friends with Frank and spoke to Frank about modifying the American Red track that we had acquired and so he and Mr. Hexler rebuilt the entire track, especially the "Bank" which he had built and hand routed so we could try and run flat out through there. He did not rob parts from the Orange track, we still had folks come in and run on it as well for years there after. The track was painted black on the outside and also the new epoxy racing surface was black, it was awesome as Frank put down all new braid and brought in a marine style battery and charger to keep the power flowing it was awesome.
Okay Outisight fans, skip forward another couple years and who comes in one day but Steve Bogut, fresh out of the Army I believe where he had been a dental assistant in Vietnam. Steve was soft spoken but very smart and very quick. I can recall all the days we would be there together and between himself and Frank and I we would try to see who could leave the most replays on the pin ball machines up front, very special times in deed. Skip forward some more and it was obvious Frank wanted to be more than a hobby shop owner so he spoke to me about putting together a small business where we sold bits and pieces for the Slot Car industry. We started small and grew to where we needed more room so Frank sold the Orange track and a friend of mine Wendell Smith showed me how to build an office inside half of the hobby shop building. Frank found a vacuum machine exactly like the one we had at MAC and we started to consider making bodies to paint and sell at the hobby shop. By this time Steve, myself and Foamy were racing intensely in the local USRA races and we were always testing and trying things, new things on the awesome black Red Track. One of the things was with bodies and aerodynamics. I still have nightmares about some of the things Foamy would come up with but in the end the bodies we cut up and glued back together were what made Outisight designs what it became. We as racers were always coming up with new ideas for the shape, cut here, glue that front to this rear, lower that section, extend that, truly made by and for racers. We were not trying to copy a real race car shape, only to make our cars go faster and I believe by the time of the 1977 Nationals race at Monaco everyone, yes everyone ran one of our Outisight designs bodies.
I have been away from racing since 1977 and Frank has passed away into slot racing heaven, but I believe Outisight Designs was and still is one of the most successful body companies ever to RACE slot cars. There are a hundred more stories to go along here, but time and space is limited, I just wanted Frank's dream and the history of his Monaco to get out there, so thanks for your time, and THANKS FRANK for all you did for me.
