Hobbies: Spin-Out on the Slots

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Verisimilitude Buffs. Basically there are two kinds of tracks—those that emphasize speed, which tend to be simple ovals, and those that go in for elaborate verisimilitude to real auto racing. This includes elaborate landscaping, grandstands filled with spectators in highly individualized attitudes, pit mechanics, starters, news photographers and such-plus gadgets to imitate the scream of an engine or to cause a simulated blowout in an opponent's car. One of the more sophisticated of these is a device that simulates a car's change in weight as its gasoline is used up by feeding more current to it with a timing device, then cutting off the current entirely when it "runs out of gas." The verisimilitude fanatics often insist on carefully modeled drivers in their carefully scaled Jaguars, Cobras, Aston-Martins, etc. On 24-hour endurance runs, the lights may be turned off during the night hours, forcing "drivers" to rely on their tiny cars' tiny headlights.

Tracks can have any layout at all; most popular length is 220 feet in twisty figure-eight over-and-under designs, which have the advantage of equalizing inside and outside lanes—though the outside lane on a slot track is not much of a disadvantage because the exceedingly spin-prone cars can take a wide curve much faster than a tight one.

Scratch & Spreads. The slot-shop craze may well turn out to be as pandemic as miniature golf. The Bank of America reports that, in California at least, the little cars are outselling that old standby, the electric train. Youngsters can rent cars in most of the racing centers until they have saved up the $6 to $8 to buy their own, or build themselves a "scratch" model from about $6 to $10 worth of materials. The mechanically minded have almost unlimited scope for improving the breed —rewinding coils and changing brushes to soup up their engines, boring holes to lighten chassis, testing new tire compositions and designs to increase traction. And oldsters with money to indulge themselves can buy their own layouts for installation in the basement, working toward the kind of spread that used to be the preserve of the model railroaders.

For young and old with racing in their blood, the stakes are already high. International Model Racing Society has offered $28,000 in awards for Grand National and International tournaments to be held this year, and American Model Car Raceways Inc. is offering a whopping $100,000 in prizes for teams composed of one person under 14, one under 21, one over 21, and a female of any age.