1960 \u2013 C56 Lister Jaguar<\/h4>\n
My dad and older siblings jumped on the Scalextric bandwagon in 1959. When I came along a decade later, a couple of Lister Jags were still big favourites for Bank Holiday family entertainment on the living room floor.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nThe Lister Jaguar was one of the first plastic cars to be produced by Scalextric, powered with the open RX motor and featuring a plastic pin guide with tufts of braid either side. The new plastic cars replaced the original tin-plate Ferrari and Maserati that were simply motorised versions of the \u2018Scalex\u2019 cars produced in Havant. Scalex + electricity = Scalextric.<\/p>\n
Scalextric was unveiled by Minimodels at the January 1957 Harrogate Toy Fair \u2013 and shortly after, the company was bought by Tri-ang. The days of tinplate toys were over and the new owners invested heavily in bringing this exciting new product into the plastic age. With proper marketing, Scalextric began to capture the imaginations of thousands of post-war motor racing enthusiasts like my dad.<\/p>\n
As the 1960s progressed, Scalextric flourished \u2013 the range of familiar accessories, including the Goodwood-inspired buildings, became the backdrop to a regularly updated catalogue of cars. Power went from batteries to chunky mains transformers; throttles changed from on-off buttons to variable speed thumb-controllers \u2013 and, in 1968, to the now-familiar ‘pistol-grip’ handles. Early on, the track changed from the original rubber to the plastic system that today’s Scalextric racers know as \u2018classic\u2019 track.<\/p>\n
1981 \u2013 C137 Ligier JS11<\/h4>\n
Although I was introduced to a controller before I could walk or talk, it wasn\u2019t until the late 70s that I seriously got into Scalextric. In terms of equipment, nothing much had changed, so I just carried on with the track handed down to me by my brother and sister. The cars had<\/em> changed \u2013 and the Ligier JS11 is a fine example of Scalextric machinery going into the 80s. It was also the Grand Prix car I rooted for in 1979 and 1980.<\/p>\n The Scalextric Ligier is powered by the legendary Johnson motor and has a traditional blade guide with the motor cables attached via brass eyelets. There\u2019s the standard big and small wheels that were fitted to all Scalextric cars at the time. Plus there\u2019s the universal \u2018peg-head\u2019 helmet that is so evocative of the era. In many ways, it’s much closer to a modern Scalextric car than to the 1960 Lister Jaguar.<\/p>\n Now owned by the Dunbee-Combex-Marx Group, Scalextric cars (and Hornby trains) were being produced at the Rovex factory in Margate. In 1982, this would become Hornby Hobbies Ltd \u2013 an independent company. Both Tri-ang and D-C-M had suffered financial problems as the post-war economic boom cooled, but Hornby Hobbies went hell-for-leather with a series of electronic accessories that were well ahead of their time. You can read a blog post about the fabulous 1981 catalogue here: blog.jadlamracingmodels.com\/2020\/09\/28\/scalextric-history-1981-comic-book\/<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ll never forget the fun I had with Scalextric as a child and as a teenager\u2026 but then the toys got left behind as I began exploring an exciting new adult life. My parents remembered the importance of Scalextric to me \u2013 and a box with a few of my cars (including the Ligier) arrived when they cleared out the family home. After a 15-year gap, I bought a Scalextric rally set on a whim. I realised a lot had changed since the 1980s \u2013 but didn’t realise even bigger changes were about to happen.<\/p>\n This Subaru was one of the first cars I added to the set. The detail of the body was a big step up from the Ligier. Mechanically, the car is powered by the Mabuchi S-can motor that is still used \u2013 as are the gears and axle bushings. There\u2019s an early form of magnatraction \u2013 introduced in the 1990s, plus a guide without wires and working lights illuminated by a central bulb.<\/p>\n This model was one of the last Scalextric cars manufactured in the UK. Production had started moving to China during 1998 and the Margate assembly line stopped for good in 2000. Chinese factories offered modern techniques and lower costs that could deliver the super-high-detail cars that companies like Fly had recently introduced into the slot car market. It was those high-detail models that re-infected me with the slot car bug.<\/p>\n My rally set still had the same \u2018classic\u2019 track of the 60s, 70s and 80s. There was a new integrated powerbase straight and some new borders and barriers, but otherwise it was identical. The hand throttles had been updated \u2013 and these would carry over to the new Chinese-made Sport track that arrived on the scene in 2001.<\/p>\n Twenty years on and the fundamentals have remained the same, although with a few significant innovations. The Sport track system has been a great success, joined by Scalextric Sport Digital in 2004. I wasn\u2019t an early adopter of digital, but with the 2010 C7042 Advance Powerbase and the arrival of \u2018simulation racing\u2019, I got hooked. The 2017 ARC Pro system updates digital and makes it much easier to use \u2013 I love it.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.jadlamracingmodels.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/HS2.1.jpg\")
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