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5 comments about Vintage Slot Cars.

1. This book is a must have for any baby boomer, or for that matter anyone who wants to relive the fabulous golden era of slot racing.Philippe de Lespinay is the premiere authority on vintage slot cars and proves it with this beautiful collection of well photographed and rare items.What is even more interesting is the collection of cars pictured here with the original art work packaging!This is usually the first thing to be thrown away and as such,rarer than most of the cars. I went nuts just looking at the beautiful photos of Cox, Russkit, Classic,BZ, AMT, Revell, Model Products Corp. and many other lesser known companies like Internatonal and Industro-Motive.There is even a section on brands and types of motors.While the book is 96 pages of great slot car memories, it still wasn't enough for me. I can't wait until his next book comes out!



2. Philippe has not written the slot car version of the Gutenberg Bible I'll grant you, and you won't need a fork lift to unload the book when it arrives, as it's simply not as weighty a tome as apparently one or two reviewers would have liked. Me, I loved this compendium of the slot car phenomenon -- focused on the manufacturing luminaries of the craze in the 1960s heyday, many of whom were from Los Angeles. Several years ago I made a point to visit the buildings that once housed the various manufacturers in the Los Angeles basin just for fun... It was amusing to walk into these places and ask if I could root around the attic cos it used to be a place that made slot cars -- the answer was always no...and "by the way what the hell is a slot car?"
   I once met Philippe at his place of business where he helped me determine that a car I had purchased online was in fact a poorly renditioned recreation, allowing me to subsequently get my money back from the Ebay seller. I found him self effacing, eager to discuss the hobby, massively knowledgeable and... the reason I would later purchase this book.
   Vintage Slot Cars earns it's place proudly on the shelf of the slot car aficionado in my opinion. It sits beside my Robert Schleicher and Roger Gillham books and on par as far as I am concerned.
   Commercial slot car tracks and most of the hobby died a coronary very rapidly ~ I wasn't there, since like De lespinay I was an immigrant to America (82)from England. I have to wonder was this wonderful pastime partially stomped into the ground by self appointed slot car credential police determined to make the scene as exclusively constipated and anti social as possible? There's a fairly vibrant 1/32 scene now, and in many ways it is a return to the roots of the hobby that De Lespinay's book touches upon. The evolution of the hobby may mean an eventual revival of the commercial track concept (I live mere blocks away from one of the original survivors in Buena Park)...and who knows... perhaps this time when we do it, it will be minus the self righteous posturing.



3. You probably had to have been there to have enjoyed this trip back to my junior and senior high school days.

   As I read the book my mind flashed back to the slot car magazines I read at the time. There is much historical information I didn't know or had long since forgotten. I didn't and still don't remember the author as such a major player in the industry. Constantly he interjects himself into the book, to the overall detriment of the subject.

   Having chapters for each manufacturer was one of the strong points of the book. Looking for models I owned, raced, or dreamed of owning and racing was one of the highlights of the book.

   If you were a slot car racer in the 60's or a collector today this book is a worthwhile quick read. Otherwise there's nothing here for you.

   On the other hand, if like me, you have the magazines from that era stashed away in the attic somewhere and you want to enter the hobby of collecting now; your best investment of time would probably be routing through the attic.




4. Chock-full of DeLespinay's "small fish in a small pond" ego and little else, this book is a waste of time and money. While he'd like everyone to *think* he was "Present at the Creation," DeLespinay was a mid-70's emigrant from France, and thus a VERY latecomer to the US slot scene. Even THAT dying scene isn't remotely well-covered here -- there's NO technical content, NO valuation guides (you *could* go to DeLespinay's ludicrous website and automatically divide his prices by 5, I guess..); in fact, unless you enjoy nonsensical, name-dropping anecdotes about how Phi-Phi invented everything from fire to the Gurney flap (no kidding), and minimalist murky photos of such asinine slot-flops as the Asp and similar Thingies, simply give this steaming pile a wide miss. Instead, for REAL information from a guy who really WAS present at the creation, get the new Robert Schliecher book "Racing and Collecting Slot Cars" and any of his older books if you can find them.



5. Vintage slot cars, was not what I had expected at all. Maybe thats why I chose a single star rating. The book covers primarily large scale (1/24, 1/25 and 1/32)slot car racing. Very little is mentioned about the H.O. slot cars that dominated the slot car industry during the sixty's and seventy's. This was not apparent from the review I read at the local library while researching for H.O. Scale slot car books. Consequently after mail ordering the book, I was extremly dissapointed that the book barely acknowledged the H.O. scale slot cars. What photography the book has is very good, but I honestly expect a book of this size and type to have considerably more pictures than was present. The text, while interesting, is almost entirely devoted to regurgitating the same info about manufacturer after manufacturer without really outlining concisely the offering each manufacturer produced. The title should have been "Large scale" Vintage Slot Cars, at least I would not have thought the book to be something it was not. But I was still disappointed in the text and number of pictures.

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