NASCAR Thrilling Even In The Cellar

Most of today's "In The Groove" racers are larger. 1/24 - The choice scale for commercial racing centers. This scale is only used widely in the United States and Australia. Everywhere else when slot racing is discussed, it is mostly about the smaller 1/32 scale or H.O. cars, according to John Ford, a leading authority on slot car racing since 1965. Ford noted that 1/32 is the scale of choice for most of Europe. Mostly because of the high cost of housing a slot car track, the Europeans have adopted the smaller cars because the tracks are much smaller, and a racing center could easily be put up in someone's home. This is also the case for most club tracks World wide. HO scale is 1/64, a little larger that the original HO scale of 1/87. The current breed of slot car racers offer a lot more speed and agility with some models developed as drifters capable of four-wheel slides. In 2004, the digital control systems which had revolutionized model railroading began to appear in 1:32 slot cars, offering the promise of multiple cars per lane and more realistic passing. Some speculate that digital control will soon replace conventional slot racing, but only time will tell if the appeal of racing on parallel slots with simple controls, which has endured for half a century, may yet outlive the expectations of the high-tech advocates.