In the 1960s, Aurora Plastics sold a boatload of model kits as part of their toy and hobby product lines. I had a few of them and wish I still did now. That included a series of model slot car sets sold as part of the Model Motoring brand. This is one of those sets and it appears to be complete and may work, though the seller has not checked any of it out. Located in Unityville, Pennsylvania (from the seller’s profile), this nifty playset from our youth is available here on Facebook Marketplace for $450. What a cool tip brought our way by our pal Howard A!
Aurora started in business in 1950, had its best run in the 1960s and 1970s, and ceased operations in 1980 after a series of ownership changes and shifts in demand. They were well known for a range of products in the hobby arena, including to-scale model cars, airplanes, action figures, and slot cars in the Model Motoring lineup. The latter was a slot car racing system from the UK that Aurora licensed for production and sales in the U.S. We understand that by 1965, more than a quarter-million had been sold of these so-called “pancake cars”.
Though we’re not sure which set this is or when it was produced, two of the four slot cars are an early Ford Mustang and a C2 Chevrolet Corvette. The other two might be a British sports car (or a Nash Metropolitan) and a Ferrari. It appears this set has been well-cared for over the past 60 years, attesting to having survived this long in its original box (important to toy collectors).
The set comes with two parts cars in case the other four need repair. It also has its original transformer, thumb control controllers, multiple pieces of 9-inch straight track, a pair of smaller straight pieces of track, and the all-important automatic lap counter to keep tabs on who’s leading in your fun group. Add to this a selection of corner pieces, the factory manual, and a few repair pieces. All you may need now is a really big table to set this all up on and then give it a go! Ah, to be 12 years old again!
Yes!!!!! I was really hoping you’d post this!!!! Thank you Howard for finding it and Russ for writing it. Aurora TJets, Tycopro ( with the white silicone tires), Aurora Magnetraction, Aurora GPlus Tyco Curve Huggers… ( I still have the ones thay were special to me.) Years ago when the kids were young I actually bought a ton of used Tyco track and made a large 4 lane layout. They would go to the basement with me and we’d have a blast. Unfortunately kids grow up, they didn’t keep the interest. But at least they got to experience a happy piece of my growing up. I jokingly would tell people it was the only time my older brother and I ever got along. ( I was a pest).
This is such a great find, and thank you so much once again for putting it on here.
Seeing the original transformer the original controllers the cars, heck I can still smell them running. ( If you ever raced slot cars you know what I’m talking about.) The original box. This is not a common thing to find in this condition with the box. I hope it goes to a good home, and for crying out loud DON’T PUT IT ON A SHELF, ENJOY IT!!!!
Instant flashback! I loved racing these cars. The smell just came back and the red oil for the motor.
yep……started earlier with the steering wheel controlers…..still have most all of mine from then and later.
This is priced a little on the high side – still alot of these coming up in Estate sales and garage sales.
The yellow car is a Maserati. One of my favorite Thunderjets!
I had one of these sets, but the controllers were boxes with a small steering wheel on it and a dial that showed how fast your car was going. We built “drag strips” by putting a bunch of straight sections together and then we’d run the cars off the end into other “parked” cars or walls made of plastic “bricks”.
When I was little the TJet set my brother (7 years older than me) had, contained the steering wheel controllers, I remember them!!! We did the drag strip thing too. He beat the snot out of me every single time, but once, just once, I beat him. Mom called dinner and I was the proudest 8 year old kid in the world. And my older brother took the loss graciously. Then after dinner….. Well, like I said…. I beat him once.
I too recall playing with these sets and these were the earliest controls, as I recall, and when you used them for a long time they would get hot in your hands from the heat generated by the electricity passing through them. Next were the grey boxes and the black steering wheels and then AFX brought out the orange hand-gun types where the black trigger slid the bar across the copper coil wires inside. The size of the transformer would effect how much power went into the track so we hooked up double transformers. I still have the set in my basement but doubt that the wheels would be of use after so many years.
Outstanding find Howard!!
A friend in JHS & HS started with a small HO setup in a studio apartment/ garage on his folks property and through the years it got bigger, to the point that we would build the track of the month-Daytona was massive. All this was done to scale and spurred competition to the nine’s with rewound armatures, gold pickup contacts, rebuilt hand controllers and more.
Good times, and it USUALLY kept us out of trouble.k
Dave went on after HS to get involved collecting AMC’s of all sorts and built quite a niche for himself in later years, an interesting chapter itself.
Thanks for the time trip!
You want memories, I can slather them on with a patching trowel. I do want to thank Russ( who claimed the tip in 30 seconds or less) and the staff for bringing this to the site. In keeping with the Sting Ray bikes, magazines and other such important, at the time, activities to us. It’s, in part, what made us what we became later on in life. The road race set, came in so many forms. From the basic figure 8, to the sprawling combinations limited only by our imagination. Aurora was the most popular for HO, it, for a spell, was the universal gift. We’d combine our sets to make one big set. I was lucky to have a Hobby Horse within biking distance. Those rotating cases, with all the doo-dads. Silver brushes, and pickups, slicks, different bodies, we pee’d away many an hour, around and around. These controls had carbon discs inside, and the button made a hole in your thumb. Other controls were, the steering wheel, a gas pedal, and several “trigger” types. There were banked curves, and the rear pin that prevented spinouts, but made the cars tippy. With the guardrails, you could almost drift the cars. Not to pat myself on the back, but we got pretty good at it. I read, HO slot cars, or 1/64th scale, could reach scale speeds of 370 mph!
Then, there were the slot car tracks. We had a few in Milwaukee, 1/32 and 1/24th. Maybe 10 lanes, you’d rent a control and bring in your own car. One guy, brought out his pride and joy from a small suitcase, all dollied up with chrome, set it on the track, hitched up the control wrong, it took off like a shot, hit the wall, and turned into pieces. Oh such drama!
That was then, this is now. The buzzkill is of course the price. When I moved here 7 years ago, I visited a thrift shop that had a set just like this, but not as nice, but complete. Price? $25 bucks and I balked at that. 1965 came and went, but not before toys like this enriched our lives, something I fear is truly missing today. My set got stuffed in my parents attic like so many others when REAL cars took over. I went looking for it many years ago and my mom said she gave it away. Thanks Russ for a great writeup and to all that this jogs a memory.
My mother threw away my baseball card collection years after I left home. I had inherited much of it. Many cards from the 1940s. I cringe when think of what that would be worth today, and not long ago rotted away in a landfill. Old story I guess. Dad had a similar story. After he came home from the war, he was assigned to clean out the family homestead before the farm was sold off. A place my family had occupied from not long after the Civil War. He talked about burning things for days, kept muttering to himself that no one had ever threw away anything. He described some of the things he burned, things that would make the American Picker guys gleeful with joy and open those wallets wide. At the time, my mother couldn’t read the future anymore than my father could. All she saw was some childhood plaything, long ago forgotten and gathering dust.
My baseball cards and HO set were tossed in 1972 when we moved 😭😭
Nice find, Howard! My brother and I got a Strombecker Monza set as kids and it’s still in our mom’s basement. It’s like this one, and is still in the original box:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225756126415
Uuuf, and you passed up one like the one shown above for $25?! I think the days of finding these things for peanuts are long gone, sadly.
Yes i had many of these, i remember the trick tracks you could add on, like a loop, humps, cobblestone and others. Where is the set box cover?
Cool. We used to douse them with lighter fluid and send them down the track. Firecrackers worked well also. PS just saw a car parts company selling new sets form 75 to 380 dollars, with cars. Found the article… It was in a Summit Racing catalog. AFX is still making sets.
I owned one of these. My controllers were a bit different, One car I remember I had was a ‘65 Buick Riviera (and possibly some english model car as well). Also had a local slot car track in Dover, Del. that my brother & I would ride our bikes to on Saturday and race our cars on the track (for a fee, of course). Totally fun youth. Kids today, meh, look at my phone.
I clear out homes down here, find many great items kids leave behind in parents homes, sold many RC cars, some for well over 100.00 each, just one car.
Many of us had these. The box we all wanted to see under the tree. I still have two cars, but nothing more.
I bought mine at a yard sale for $1 in
’67 and still enjoyed it as if it brand new. And as Howard and many others of you have said the size of your track and the layout depended on your imagination and how much money you could spend on it. By the time I sold mine in ’69, I had amassed
enough truck and other parts to put
together a sprawling track setup that
took up a lot of our basement back then. I also had some of those building kits that Kenner sold with which I built a small city to drive my cars through. There was a kid I knew
who even had a train set patched into
his slot car track! Not that was fun to
watch. Sometimes, his train would jump the track after hitting someone’s
car. Now THAT was fun.
Around 20 years ago, a former co-worker invited me over to his one bedroom apartment, to try and sell me his Harley. He had fallen to the bottle, and was in need of cash. The Harley was frozen into the mud floor of the garage, didn’t run, and I could tell he was literally giving it away at the price he gave me. We went up to his place and inside, taking up the entire kitchen, and the living room, was a slot car track! Biggest set up I’d seen since those places that Howard described above. I couldn’t believe it! Passed on the bike, but raced him for a while. A strange, but interesting encounter.
My 2 brothers and I were lucky enough to wake up to an Aurora Model Motoring set on one wonderful Christmas morning in the 60s. Many great Christmas’s since but none have matched the sheer thrill of that day.
thanks howard A. for my brother and i , it was an afx track. and like drivinstile said it was about the only time we didn’t fight like cats and dogs (though he was the pest and the little brother lol). but mant an hour were spent in the basement seeing just how fast you could go and stay on the track.
Lots of guys with memories here-
My buddy and I used to walk the 1 mile from our North End homes to Staduium Toy and Craft next to Stadium High School to drool over the original Scalextrix sets, but then Aurora introduced the HO size sets which were within the reach of a couple kids earning money by mowing lawns and cleaning yards. We pooled our sets and had a nice setup in his parent’s basement. Ours were the early “vibrator” motors which we quickly found that by shortening the pushrod and adding dual truck tires our lap times were cut in half.
The vibrator cars were the best! You could tune them by bending the reed just a little too. I still have a set in the basement, but the bodies are cut up for bigger wheels, regrettably. Thunder jet cars were faster, but boring.
Wait, what? Cars shaped like vibrators or vibrators shaped like cars?
Thunderjets boring? I know about a hundred boys from the 60s who would respectfully disagree.
Built drag strip and used baby powder for burnouts.
I grew up in the ’60 just a few blocks from their factory. We used to poke around their dumpsters looking for stuff, but they never left much laying around. I did have the set that’s for sale though.
Set up my son and grandsons AFX G-plus , 4 lane track this Christmas for the nieces and nephews to see. They were astounded. Hours of playing was heartwarming to see. Had to get some new slicks as foam rear tires started to evaporate. Still have T-Jet, early AFX, magna traction, Tyco, and Gplus cars. Some new in packages.
Time for an HO revival!
Ps. Petty #43 Gplus Roadrunner is fastest car I have !
Absolutely time.
My buddies and I would combine our Aurora tracks to make huge layouts. Also started with the vibrating “reed” models that we would experiment with modifying them to go faster and cut down the bodies to save weight. Eventually graduated to COX 1/24th scale building custom magnesium frames with rewound motors and thin-as-can-be vacuum formed bodies. Would be fun to do it all over again!
As much as I look forward to Barn Finds each day, today is special. This article and the comments really sent me into a memory, far far away. What a pleasant morning sitting back and remembering those wonderful joy filled days of racing slot cars in our family den back in the 60’s. The perfect way to spend this cold, snowy day here. Thanks guys!
Another great BF item and discussion! Like so many said; my brother and I wore out our greatest Christmas present ever. I love the comments that mention the smell memories. Same smell with our train set. Was it the transformer? The store tracks were also a great part of my early teens. I can’t say what was more fun; building and tinkering or racing. I spent a good chunk of my lawn mowing money on it. Thanks everybody for kickstarting the old childhood memory machine.
I’m not as excited as most to posted here about this set. The seller wants $450 and he doesn’t even know if it works. It wouldn’t be much trouble to make sure that the Transformer works and the cars work. I’m certainly going to pass
Boy, what a pleasant surprise to see this post. I also have my original set with the original (beat up) box. I do have extra tracks, some trick tracks and two cars. This may prompt me to try and sell it all to get some extra cash.
My First Slot Car Set The Controller Used A C Battery For Power. It Had A Rubber Band From The Motor To The Wheels. It Was Fun. My Mom Bought For Me At The Five And Dime. My Second Slot Car Set Was Tyco 440 X2 It Hade Indy Or Formula 1 Cars I Made My Track As Close To Willow Spring In Rosemond CA As I Could I Would Take Hot Wheel Car Bodys And Make Them Fit. They Would Drift Real Good Because Of The Waight Of The Hot Wheels Bodys. Had My Track I In My One Car Garage I Had It On A Pully System I Could Pull It UP Take Off The Legs And Park My 1967 Mustang In The Garage.
We had one of these when I was a kid, and we used to save our allowance money to buy cars and more track to expand the basic layout. The local hobby store near our house carried all of the bits, including additional cars. The ultimate track pieces we bought were two (2) railroad crossings, that allowed you to connect the set to an HO-scale model railroad, so we could run the train along with the slot cars! We had loads of fun trying to beat the train across the tracks and failing, LOL! The set in the pictures accompanying the article used a slightly newer type of car controller. Ours looked like little steering wheels, with a “speedometer” style pointer that swept from left-to-right as you turned the steering wheel clockwise to increase power to the cars to make them go faster! Stirling Moss was featured on the cover of the “Service Manual” in our set.
I had always dreamed of having an HO train set but was just unaffordable in my youth, (yeah, cry me a river.) But I did get an Aurora set like this and later a second beat up set with stuff missing. What great fun they were. I remember one of the cars was a Jag XKE. I was stunned to learn that this HO gauge was compatible with HO train sets and I even found a set of RR crossings where the tracks crossed the road, but I never did get a train to go with it. When we moved across the country I sold the sets for a song. Who knew what they would be worth today?
I think that my mom was afraid of me plugging anything into an electric outlet,. Hence my slot car fun, came from my Motorific Torture Track battery operated set! I still have a few pieces and parts of it!
This may have been my first HO car set back around 62 or 63. The car collection grew to over 60 cars. We’d cut, paint and modify cars to look like our favorite driver’s cars from the Reading (PA) Fairgrounds. Dad periodically gave me boxes of track for helping him out instead any kind of allowance. Vibrators, pancake motors, early and later style Tyco cars. Numerous styles of controllers. No train crossings but about every other style of 2 lane tracks made. With the neighbors we had weekend long weekend drag racing events inspired by nearby Maple Grove Park Dragway. My grandchildren are now getting old enough to appreciate HO racing and will be a Holiday tradition for them. Thanks for this post.
Yea, but no engine photos! 😊
Yep, started out with the blue mustang convertible and red ’63 Riviera, and a couple others I can’t remember. I collected a bunch of track, so my dad built a 4’x8′ foldout in the dining room wall (small house, only child). He was a truck driver, but he fed my auto addiction in a big way.
sold!