For those of us not getting an Emira soon

[4380r]

I'll wind up with one sooner or later. I've owned 10 1:1 scale Lotus over 40 years. In the meantime, I'll build 3D printed 1/32 scale Emira slot cars. Here are three Emira GT4 bodies that will go to finishing. Absent are the wings: they've been printed and will be finished separately, then mounted on the body. I built one GT4 using a standard Emira street car body, but these have the actual extra nostrils printed into the body (on my replica they were decals) and there are other details, like fuel filler doors and proper front splitter and rear wing these models will have. I have a mold for the windshield and 'glass' to use with a dental grade vac forming machine.

 

[Eagle7]

You actually have all this equipment? You're a serious modeler it seems! Have you built anything else besides cars?

 

[benjh1028]

That is amazing! I love the lift!

 

[4380r]

You actually have all this equipment? You're a serious modeler it seems! Have you built anything else besides cars?

Hell no. I have friends who can do necessary scans and create the .stl files for printing. Then I have acquaintances who love to 3D print and do these for me. MY part is in the finishing and assembly. I DO have the dental grade vac form machine. I've been a slot car hobbyist since being a teen during the hobby's hey dey in the 60's/'70's. Now, I limit my slot car hobby to building and collecting Lotus slot cars.

 

[Eagle7]

Hell no. I have friends who can do necessary scans and create the .stl files for printing. Then I have acquaintances who love to 3D print and do these for me. MY part is in the finishing and assembly. I DO have the dental grade vac form machine. I've been a slot car hobbyist since being a teen during the hobby's hey dey in the 60's/'70's. Now, I limit my slot car hobby to building and collecting Lotus slot cars.

I remember those days. When the slot car craze first got started in the early 60's, my best friend and I were into it. I had a Cox Chaparral car, and I think he had a Cobra if I remember right. There was a big commercial track not too far from where we lived, and we'd go in and buy track time. I think it was something like 10 cents for 10 minutes or something like that. It was great until the older kids, and then the adults started getting into it. They had plenty of money and could just sit on a station and dominate it for hours. The track only had 8 lanes so you'd have to wait for one of them to stop so you could get on and play. It didn't take long before we just didn't bother anymore.

Even if you could get on though, it quickly became futile. They had souped up custom-wound low ohm controllers, and custom cars that were basically just wedges. They didn't care about their cars looking like a real-world race car. All they cared about was speed, and their cars were so fast that they were a blur going around the track. Ours were pathetic by comparison. It didn't take long before we were just in the way, so we stopped going. My friend's parents got him an Eldon race car set, so we set up a track on a piece of plywood in his garage and that's where we drove our cars. Nowhere near as big or exciting as the commercial track, but we still had fun.

 

[4380r]

I remember those days. When the slot car craze first got started in the early 60's, my best friend and I were into it. I had a Cox Chaparral car, and I think he had a Cobra if I remember right. There was a big commercial track not too far from where we lived, and we'd go in and buy track time. I think it was something like 10 cents for 10 minutes or something like that. It was great until the older kids, and then the adults started getting into it. They had plenty of money and could just sit on a station and dominate it for hours. The track only had 8 lanes so you'd have to wait for one of them to stop so you could get on and play. It didn't take long before we just didn't bother anymore.

Even if you could on though, it quickly became futile. They had souped up custom-wound low ohm controllers, and custom cars that were basically just wedges. They didn't care about their cars looking like a real-world race car. All they cared about was speed, and their cars were so fast that they were a blur going around the track. Ours were pathetic by comparison. It didn't take long before we were just in the way, so we stopped going. My friend's parents got him an Eldon race car set, so we set up a track on a piece of plywood in his garage and that's where we drove our cars. Nowhere near as big or exciting as the commercial track, but we still had fun.

A solid graduate thesis in marketing or business could be written about the rise and fall of the slot car craze of the mid/late '60's in the US. During that time, it was THE biggest toy/hobby in the US. Bigger than the hoola hoop, slinky, stingray bikes, anything. It was for boys what Barbie was to girls. At its peak there were over 5000 commercial slot racing centers, all with multiples of the giant 8 lane track you describe. The hobby was everything from folks playing with their HO scale Christmas present sets to full blown commercial racing with pro factory teams, and custom built high performance cars that would cost thousands of dollars in today's money. And just like that, it ground to a halt and the hobby disappeared.

There are no shortage of opinions as to why the hobby crashed, so hard and fast. One contributing factor is what you described: people were buying off the shelf cars from Cox, Monogram, Revell, and others, and they soon found out none of those cars was even remotely competitive with the pro built cars folks were running on those commercial tracks. Ironically, today, those 'off the shelf' slot cars in undamaged and perhaps even in original packaging can bring thousands of dollars on the collector market today.

 

[Eagle7]

A solid graduate thesis in marketing or business could be written about the rise and fall of the slot car craze of the mid/late '60's in the US. During that time, it was THE biggest toy/hobby in the US. Bigger than the hoola hoop, slinky, stingray bikes, anything. It was for boys what Barbie was to girls. At its peak there were over 5000 commercial slot racing centers, all with multiples of the giant 8 lane track you describe. The hobby was everything from folks playing with their HO scale Christmas present sets to full blown commercial racing with pro factory teams, and custom built high performance cars that would cost thousands of dollars in today's money. And just like that, it ground to a halt and the hobby disappeared.

There are no shortage of opinions as to why the hobby crashed, so hard and fast. One contributing factor is what you described: people were buying off the shelf cars from Cox, Monogram, Revell, and others, and they soon found out none of those cars was even remotely competitive with the pro built cars folks were running on those commercial tracks. Ironically, today, those 'off the shelf' slot cars in undamaged and perhaps even in original packaging can bring thousands of dollars on the collector market today.

For us it was when money came into the sport that did it in. I remember in a town nearby a huge 16 lane track went in and it was awesome. His dad took us over to see it, and it was packed of course. With only 16 stations, you didn't stand a chance of getting any time on it, not that we would have put our cars on there. We would have been a joke. The "big kids" had these custom cars with custom soldered brass tubing chassis, custom wound motors, tire goo to put on their tires for traction, custom vacuum-formed wedges for bodies. We had the thumb plunger controllers we got with our off-the-shelf slot cars, and they had these big trigger-pull controllers that went from off to full power in about a 1/4 inch of pull. We'd show up with the retail box our cars came in, and they'd have big fishing tackle boxes loaded with cars, motors, brushes, tires, tools, etc. We were just kids lol, we didn't stand a chance.

This is like the car I had which I thought was SO cool looking. A Cox Chaparral 2A which was a replica of the actual Chaparral race cars that were racing in Can Am. The real cars would run out at the International Raceway in a nearby town, and we'd get to go sometimes to watch and listen. The thunder of Chevy and Ford V8's out on the track was awesome sounding to us back then. They were simpler times in many ways, but I'm glad I got to grow up as a kid then and experience them.