[ZOERA-SC7XX]

When I was a kid, my (late) uncle, Sparky Belmont, a veteran New England stock car driver and champion, had my dad get me started in commercial slot car racing. I built my own first car and learned to race it in the Tuesday night men's league in the Branford, CT. Hobby parlor. Being much too young to drive a full-sized car, I took to slot racing like a fish to water and went on to build and race all over CT., winning many races. To me it was real racing, until at the age of sixteen, I discovered girls and full-sized cars. After that, there was no more time for slots. Still, the memories of those racing days and nights stuck in my mind as ideal times, and I recently (after more than forty years) visited a commercial slot racing facility. What I saw I liked, especially with the newer rules prohibiting expensive rewind motors and bodies that do not look like cars. I also like the Hard-Body slot cars, based on 1/25 scale model cars over factory produced 'stock' slot car chassis. I also have many vintage slot cars and components that will recreate the slot cars of the 1960's.
Slot car racing is generally a winter thing, and I'm looking forward to competing again, as well as building a home routed wood 50' semi-banked oval for the stock cars. It's really just another car thing, as I also build contest-quality scale models and collect die cast cars. It doesn't replace driving the Cobra and the vintage modified race car, but just adds to the automobile insanity I came down with around the age of three or four. I love seeing these other car hobbies displayed here on CC. It shows me I'm not the only insane person here.