The Rotary Speaker for Tomorrow is Tobin Grable of Grable’s Slot Cars in Clinton
Slot car racing was born in the early 1900s, but the hobby languished until the 1950s, when English entrepreneurs began to build electrified tracks and controllable scale-model cars to race on them.
The new system spread to America. By the mid-’60s, there were more than 3,000 public race tracks in the U.S. and controllable scale-model cars to race on them.
Slot cars are usually models of actual automobiles, though some have bodies purpose-designed for miniature racing. Most enthusiasts use commercially available slot cars (often modified for better performance), others motorize static models, and some “scratch-build,” creating their own mechanisms and bodies from basic parts and materials.
Slot car racing ranges from casual get-togethers at home tracks, using whatever cars the host makes available, to very serious competitions in which contestants painstakingly build or modify their own cars for maximum performance and compete in a series of races culminating in a national championship.
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