4 replies to this topic

[MSwiss]

Coincidentally, Mark Mattei brought in AMT Turnpike cars and track to show at the Vintage car race last Saturday.

I came home tonight to a new issue of the super-awesome Hot Rod Deluxe, a terrific 60th birthday gift, from Dave Crevie, that he apparently continues to renew for me.

I've posted non 1/1 pics from it, before.

I like the reference to "teen fairs".

[Bill from NH]

The AMT Turnpike set was way ahead of its time. I got one in 1963, bought a second car & control, & had lots of fun swapping the bodies from my AMT model kits. The cars had steerable front wheels, fairly good speed, & the soft rubber tires provided good traction, so running them on the track was fun. Unfortunately, I shared a small bedroom, so I was never able to keep it set up. Assembly & disassembly was a PIA to a 15 yr. old kid. When commercial slot car racing came to the wilds of Maine in '67, I sold my Turnpike to another family.

[MattD]

One of the few pictures of an actual working Turnpike set.   

 

My opinion, I consider it a "Rube Goldberg" slot car design.   Great toy for engineers to play with but a 12 year old, not so much.     Pain to assemble it.    I had one and it worked, but not great.

 

If AMT had gone the conventional route and offered a 1/24 scale track, similar to Carrera, only about 50 years ahead of them, they would have been the only true 1/24 in the market.   If anybody knows of an earlier true 1/24 scale track set, please post it.

 

The AMT model kits were already the gold standard for kids into model building.   If they had designed a couple (3- 4) basic chassis setups that were made to accept their model car line up, a kid could buy a chassis and the model of his choice and build a nice hard body 1/24  car for his track.   If he wanted to use models he already built, he could swap bodies.   All this would have been ahead of everybody else and offered a quality  easy to put together slot car set. 

 

In 62 the only real competition in America would have been Eldon and Strombecker 1/32 if I am correct.   No competition actually.   

 

This is just my opinion of what could have been.   I think the history shows the Turnpike sets got  junked pretty quick.  I remember a large turnpike setup in one of the model mags and they said the track was covered with copper tape and converted to standard slot racing.   

[Howie Ursaner]

I had the AMT Turnpike. It was cool but i was bored with it pretty quickly.

[Ramcatlarry]

It IS an engineers slot car track - overly complicated and not really intended for children. 

 

Around 1963, in Aurora, IL, the Local Fox Valley Park District let a group of regional SCCA racers use some space for an AMT track.  I had the opportunity to play with them a few times and  rebuilt my own car by taking an AMT chassis and shortening it to fit a 1957 Corvette Coupe body.  The car was lost in the shuffle over the years and reappeared this past week in Mark Mattei's hands at the Vintage Races at Chicagoland.  He found it at the Swap meet.  There should be other short cars out there since many of the adult racers also tried to make models of their big cars.

 

I am still looking for some of those drivers,  One of them gave me a set of wire wheels and used Goodyear Bluestreaks from his Austin Healy 3000 that I had on my MGA for a while.  My Dad did a lot of automotive machine shop work for them.