Vintage Slot Cars [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Among today's collectors of classic toys, slot cars rank right up there with toy trains in popularity. During the slot car industry's heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, nearly every town had a commercial track where enthusiasts pitted their vehicles against one another in scale-sized motorsport showdowns. With the help of dozens of great color photographs, this nostalgic history looks back at vehicles, tracks, packaging and racing memorabilia from such popular slot-car manufacturers as Aurora/AFX, Tyco, Scalectrix, Strombecker and Cox, as well as dozens of smaller toymakers. With forewords by real-life racing greats Jim Hall and Dan Gurney, the author also discusses the short-lived world of professional slot-car racing, in which he was a participant.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Motorbooks International; illustrated edition edition (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0760305668
• ISBN-13: 978-0760305669
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,491,664 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For Slot Car Collectors, This Is A Must., September 21, 1999

By A Customer

Delightfully photographed in color, this is a must for any collector of vintage large scale slot cars. De Lespinay does a superbly thorough job of cataloging the evolution of the hobby and describing the cars and the manufacturers that made them. I can only hope that an expanded edition awaits on the horizon, with even more pictures and information. A great accompaniment to Roger Gillam's "Scalextric :Cars Past and Present.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Greatly needed and much appreciated...., April 20, 2000

By	goodoldmac "goodoldmac" (Charlotte, North Carolina United States) - See all my reviews

Beautiful color photos are on almost every page of this book, covering the "golden age" of slot cars (roughly coinciding with the '60's)Those of us old enough to remember those glory days (never mind how old!)will drool over the shots of the Cox, KB, and Monogram cars (and probably bore to tears those around us with long speeches about how things were in the "good old days")The "backbone" of the home slot racer, Strombecker,is well represented here as its earlier British counterpart,Scalextric. The fact that remainders of the Cox inventory wound up in land-fills will bring tears to the eyes of many of us...The book is worth the price for the photos alone, with the excellent text being icing on the cake. Not as comprensive as I would have liked but you can have everything... one minor criticism being some models are given significant coverage in the text, with no photos of them presented. But man, this old slot car racer has loved every mintue spent browsing, and remembering, with this book....

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very informative and colorful, March 21, 2000

By A Customer

This book provides a lot of detail about an interesting and little-known period in toy history - the reign of the slot cars. I bought it for a friend who collects these cars and ended up reading it myself in one afternoon. Great photos.