We got a Strombecker figure eight for Christmas of '64, the cars were terrible, hard to stay on the track for one lap. It was those hard, skinny rubber rires. Undeterred however, we played for hours on it until we broke the cars and track. My cousin lived near Rolling Hills Raceway, you could see it from his house, so we would ride our bikes over there and rent cars. The cars were the same as the Strombecker in that they handled terribly and you spent most of your time running over to the far side of the track to put it back in its lane when it de-slotted. It was almost impossible for an eight-year old kid to make a complete lap, even on the red Imperial track, but again, we loved trying to drive and dreamed of being able to afford a brass "thingy", or a nice Russkit.
Then there was those guys with the handmade plywood pit boxes full of nice pro slot cars, man were they fast with their anglewinders. I can't tell you how many times we got cussed out because they hit our rental cars when we spun out, or we crashed into them trying going full bore down the straight in an effort to keep up.
A Cox La Cucaracha was on my Xmas list, as we could barely afford an hour for rental of a car and controller. Recall back then, that middle class kids such as myself were lucky to get 75 cents allowance a week. If we had five bucks to our name, we would have spent it all at the track, believe me.
That year, I got a Monogram, or maybe it was a Revell, Jimmy Clark F1 Lotus plastic kit for my birthday that could be made into a slot car with an additional conversion kit. It had a green plastic body, chrome-plated rims, mirrors, engine, and suspension, and was realistic, very cool. I spent hours building it, and saved for another month to buy the slot car chassis, motor, and running gear kit. At long last, I was ready to hit the track with my car, and was really stoked because this car was so much cooler than a rental Stromberg, and had a better motor, too.
All my hopes and efforts were dashed to pieces when the Lotus deslotted as I flew into the high banked turn at the end of the main straignt and it disintegrated into a bunch of pieces. The die-cast chassis was shattered so I could not even run it without the body. I had paid for an hour track time, using all my remaining money, and had no car to run, so I left with tail between my legs and let a guy with a wing car use my lane.
So, by the time I had saved up enought for a La Cucaracha, or Russkit, the track had closed. It was economics for us kids, we just could not afford good cars, or more than an hour a week of rental track time. It was not a lack of interest, it was that the equipment we could afford was inssufucient, and we were outclassed by the guys that had the good equipment to such an extent that it precluded us from ever being able to be competitive, even though we aspired to become racers. The cars of the era, especially the scale ones, were easily destroyed in a crash and were not durable, even though they were beautiful. At our age, it took too much skill to build your own brass car without some kind of help and mentoring.
I often thought that if they had just equipped the rental cars with foam tires, it would have made the whole experience so much better, and at least we would have been able to get a complete lap in without crashing, but they never did that. Today, they do have really good handling rental cars at Buena Park, and my kids love to go there to drive.
So one reason the "next generation," meaning us kid under 10 years old, did not participate was the sport had evolved to the point that it had become too expensive for us. What we did instead was to go buy inexpensive Aurora AFX cars and run HO at some kid's house. We would pool together our HO sets to make a giant track in the garage and race. The HO cars could take real punishment and survive, plus they handled much better than the 1/24 and 1/32 cars, and we could play for hours. I'm sure that reall hurt the few remaining commercial tracks because we were not patronizing them and instead we were buying HO stuff at department stores.
Today, I have gotten back into it and built a couple Hanada D3 Can-Am cars, one has a Lola T70 body, the other is a rolling chassis for a back-up. They are a lot of fun, I just run them for enjoyment and don't bother to enter the races.