Slot Cars

These cars, along with other models, gave slot-car fans plenty to get excited about. The biggest manufacturer was a U.S. company called Aurora — cars riding on the Aurora Thunderjet 500 chassis from 1963 are highly collectible. Tyco was also early at the starter’s flag, as was Fly, which made 1:32 scale slot cars for the high end of the market.

By the middle of the 1960s, no self-respecting town in the United States was without a slot-car center, where kids and their parents could bring their cars to race on enormous, banked tracks. But just like Lionel, the operators of these enterprises weren’t in the game for long as the fad quickly faded out. Some of the dedicated core of slot-car fans that remained turned to the companionship of clubs, while others set up increasingly elaborate slot-car layouts in basements across the land.

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