When I was coming up to my 5th birthday, my dad was stood outside a toyshop window with me and we were admiring the new thing: slot cars. Scalextric. He asked me if I would rather have a train set or a racing car set – and was careful to remind me that the boy next door (a year older than me) already had a train set I could play with
You can guess where I get my petrolheadedness from.
Sure enough, I went for the figure of 8 Scalextric set with two D-type Jaguars
My dad and I – and then my chums – had loads of fun learning to drive slot cars at the limit.
Was fun for a couple of years, but then I spent my pocket money on other stuff like a racing bike - and the Scalextric set stayed in the box.
Then when my kid brother was about 11, he spent loads of his saved up pocket money to buy a heap of secondhand Scalextric track (new, locking type – mine was the original which slid together... and apart) and a bunch of cars. We then made up great tracks in our bedroom and – with the headlamp-equipped Ferrari and Aston Martin – even used to run them in the dark. We stripped them down, lightened the body work, altered the tyres – having them at extreme cambers (less grip when accelerating, but better in the corners) or even with double tyres on the rear on a Porsche model. Great fun for a couple of years until I went away to uni.
About 10 years later, my bro and I went to watch petrol R/C cars on a great circuit. It seemed fantastic, but when we priced it out, it seemed very expensive. In the end, we went for a slotcar set-up again. We both invested and built the track at my flat where I had a really big hobby room. This time we went for Carrera – with the steerable, lane-changing design so that you could actually choose the inside of the corner and then try to get the drop on someone on a straight, overtake and retake the racing line. The first cars were a BMW M1 and a Zakspeed Capri Turbo, IIRC. Great fun again. Bought several more and put different bodies on them, e.g. Jaguar E-type coupé
It got packed away when we had to move and only unpacked about four years later when we moved again – in my new hobby room. I was looking at getting electric lap timers, etc, as by then there was some pretty cool stuff...
but, then I got a Nintendo N64 for the kids and discovered that they had car racing games. It was really bad quality stuff, but still exciting to actually be "at the wheel" (though the wheels I bought – 3 in all – were useless without force feedback, so I used the controller.
The release of the PS2 and GT3A sealed the fate of the slotcar track. I never used it after that.
Finally, I moved the track to make room for my second sim cockpit with the PS3. I set it up in our walk-in attic, but it has never been used...
For me, sims killed slotcars.
That's why I'm wondering if anyone really prefers slotcars with the other options now available.
