105 replies to this topic

[Cheater]

. . . They did me! :cry:

Slot Spot before:





Slot Spot after:







What can you say . . .

[Maximo]

Cheater,

That breaks my heart! What a shame . . .

I'm speechless . . .

- Maximohno

[Cheater]

Maxi, what's even worse is that, like at a lot of raceways, most of the owners and a number of racers stored their slot car boxes at the track . . .
:?

[Ron Hershman]

I think the old "Mille Migila" track was stored in the back room of the raceway when it burnt to the ground. :cry:

[Maximo]

Gents,

I have to ask, do they know what started the fire?

It is even more depressing to hear about the loss of all that customer equipment! And also the Mille Migila track stored there as well as everything else.

Sad . . . so very sad!

- Maximo

[Ron Hershman]

I heard kids setting a trash dumpster on fire. :evil: Burnt the whole shopping complex down.

[Cheater]

Maxi,

Slot Spot was in a pretty old linear strip shopping center, with maybe 5-6 businesses in it. At one end was a dumpster. IIRC correctly, a couple of local teenagers set the dumpster on fire, it spread to the building and totally destroyed the whole thing. They were caught, but as juveniles I don't think they received the kind of punishment that IMO should have been meted out.

Perhaps someone closer to Nashville can correct my recollection, if I am mistaken.

[Hworth08]

The Slot Spot in Old Hickory, TN, burned down the end of March 2004. There was a lot slot cars and equiment lost in the fire, as Cheater stated. And it was a couple teens burning a dumpster that started the fire.

I remember Jerry Millikan, who was a part owner of the business, coming to Clarksville, TN, to race with us a couple weeks after the fire. He was carrying what he called his new pit box, a cardboard box about half the size of a shoe box, all he had left after the fire.

[Maximo]

One of those poor slot cars that perished might have one day cured Cancer or won the Nobel Peace Prize . . . now we will never know!

They should have taken those guilty juvenile teenagers, gathered up all their own valuable crap and blazed it, too! Maybe they would then understand what loss had occurred.

- Maximum Punisher

[Zippity]

Oh the memories.

[Maximo]

Ron,

Thanks for contributing those documents to this thread. Those are some incredible Revell tracks!

If only I had a chance to run on any of these. If only I could turn the hands of time backward and also be Howard Hughes son that he didn't know he had . . . Max Hughes!

There would have been a huge specially-built building to house the Hughes slot car track museuem to preserve all these great tracks. It would probably be located next to the Spruce Goose!

Wake up . . . wake up! Damn, am I dreaming again????

- Maximo Hughes

[Lowrider]

Okay, Zippity,
Here's a question for you.
Who made the 1/24 tracks that International Raceways (run by Don Wong and Tom Chong) had at their Wellington and Lower Hutt locations?
Bonus points for track plans.
Regards,
Lowrider

[Zippity]

What do I get if I post the correct answers and photos? 8)

[CruzinBob]

Awesome post Zippity! I raced on a Monaco in '68 at Top Gun Raceway in Tucson, AZ. Me and a hotshot kid, Dave Fortner, used to beat up on the adults. He was about 15 and I was 16. I was the rewinder and he was the chassis builder . After I moved from there in '69 I didn't see or think about slot cars till '88 . :cry:

[Cheater]

Don't cry, Bob. We've all made our share of mistakes in life.

[CruzinBob]

Don't cry, Bob. We've all made our share of mistakes in life.

But Greg, crying is part of the healing process. :arrow: Followed by forgiving yourself and dedication not to screw up again.

[Cheater]

Bob, you cannot have any idea of how cogent your words resound in my ears at this time in our lives. Thank you for them.

[TSR]

I raced on a Monaco in '68 at Top Gun Raceway in Tucson, AZ. Me and a hotshot kid, Dave Fortner, used to beat up on the adults. He was about 15 and I was 16.

Dave had his hour of glory as one of the racers who came up with the wing-car side fences. Or is that the hour of infamy? :|

[CruzinBob]

Dave had his hour of glory as one of the racers who came up with the wing-car side fences. Or is that the hour of infamy? :|

Actually Dokk, as the fog continues to clear, Dave and I began the side dam experimentation together after contemplating the rear spoilers (and diaplanes, I think) some were using at that time. We also began using STP oil treatment on the tires which got us in lots of trouble with the track owner. :mrgreen:

BTW, Greg, life can be beautiful but I don't think it was ever meant to be easy.

[TSR]

Dave Fortner and Neil Kuhns were the pioneers in the huge side dams and Iso frames, and did quite well in the semi-pro, then pro racing in 1972-1973. Sometimes their machines proved to be the ones to beat, but not until later did they prove superior to the tried-and-true pro-racing cars of the time.
Nonetheless, pioneers they were, for good or bad.
Somehow, I am not surprised that a tricky racer like you would have been involved in something that devious . . .

[mkmarshall]

Okay,

I keep hearing about Revell commercial tracks in this thread and others.

Did Revell make their own commercial tracks of designs different from the other mfgrs? How many were built? Were these only for a Revell Slot Car Center type franchise location?

This is good stuff, for I have lived all over California for over twenty-five years but AFTER the '60s slot market had long since went away. I did get to visit some track centers that are now gone. The neat one that was in North Hollywood and several in Orange County, Bellflower, and one in PCH. Now long gone, but I'm sure that there are interesting stories of these things still in someone's mind. It's wonderful to read about a couple of kids in their Barracudas out cruising, exploring, and discovering little industrial complexes where tracks were being made! Great stuff . . .

- Maximoto

I realize this is a couple of years late (was there more to this excellent thread, by the way?) but I wanted to share the following quote from http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/RevellMonogram-Inc-Company-History.html:
"Towards the mid-1960s one of these transient fads, slot-car racing, would land the company in serious financial difficulties. Revell entered this field in 1965 with the acquisition of International Raceways, a small company that had initiated the slot-car racing phenomenon. These scaled up racing cars required large, elaborate track layouts and "commercial" slot-car racing centers began to spring up across the nation to service enthusiasts. In spite of initial enthusiasm about this new form of entertainment, the notoriously fickle teen customers that the racing cars appealed to quickly turned to other amusements and, in 1967, Revell was left with a large inventory of unsaleable slot-car paraphernalia and a $438,000 net loss." Is this an accurate reflection of history as stated? Thanks. Mike Marshall

[Rick]

Was "TOM THUMB" an american trade name? I know of Macs in Columbus and they were American tracks from the beginning, but in the PGH area there were two, Tom Thumb North and Tom Thumb South but they both sported Englemen tracks??? Maybe they also had an American I never heard of.

[Larry Mattingly]

No American tracks at Tom Thumb South or North in Pittsburgh...

LM

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

It might have been some name that the WW2 genearation thought "cool". I know of several "Tom Thumb" hobby shops from the era that had nothing to do with each other or a raceway. One In denver was FF airplanes only in the 60s and 70s until the death of the owner in the early 90s.

Fate

[don.siegel]

A fellow French collector just posted this one, in a thread where we were talking about strange lap-counters, among other things, so thought you might enjoy this shot of a small AMF track - which I assume was in France, but I'll try to find out more info....