Pre-History

1970s

Low Point

The 1970s were an exceptionally low point in the history of Scalextric following the bursting of the slot car bubble at the end of the previous decade. The market had almost totally collapsed due to declining interest and the advent of new mechanical toys such as Hot Wheels. Several of the smaller slot manufacturers had gone bust, as had Scalextric’s parent company, Triang, in 1971.

Scalextric managed to survive under new ownership but the range was drastically cut back, and production of new cars was severely limited for the next few years. Quality took a nosedive with cars such as the Mini Clubman and Porsche 935 amongst the worst ever produced by the firm. Slot racing clubs had also mostly disappeared with just a few well established ones managing to cling on.

Revival?

By 1977 however, there was the glimmer of a revival in interest and some new racing clubs appeared, amongst which was the most important as far as this tale is concerned – The London Scalextric Club.

Roy Charlesworth, the club’s founder, worked as a dance instructor at the Harmony Ballroom in Wood Green, North London and so he was able to use the dance hall on a Sunday to build a circuit and host races. The track sections he used in the beginning were old Plexytrack from his previous club nine years before when model slot car racing had succumbed to the might of the commercial raceway.

He advertised his race days in the Exchange and Mart and was surprised at the good response he got as people came from all over London and the South East region to race every two weeks. The club grew so well that it organised a South of England Championship for several years.

Johnny Herbert

The 1979 event attracted a 60 strong entry and one of the drivers racing that day was a 15 year old John Herbert from Romford Essex who had arrived escorted by his father. Though he had never even seen the circuit before he went on to finish 3rd, beating most of the home drivers in the process. Johnny, as he later became better known, went on to greater things in real cars, winning F1 Grand Prix as well as Le Mans.

Read the full report of the 1979 South of England Scalextric Championship

The following year the club lost its premises but soon found a new home at St Marks Church Hall just 200 yards from where it had begun, and they race there to this day every Tuesday evening.

Roger Gillham

Aside from the racing quite a few of its members had begun to collect early Scalextric cars which could be picked up for as little as a pound each at that time. Foremost amongst them was a certain Roger Gillham who was already working on the first edition of his legendary Enthusiasts Guide. Accordingly, Roy decided to start a collectors’ branch of the club, it was a separate entity with a subscription of £3 a year and produced Newsletters in 1979/80. I have 6 of them in my possession but there may have been more. Here is #2 which also came with a couple of pages of members’ sales/swaps/wants.

Apart from Roger there were several members who would become well known to the collecting fraternity such as Martin O’Reilly, Shaun Claremont, Chris Gregory, Reg Palmer and Eddie Collins. Surprisingly, the branch had some members in the USA including Lee Stokely of California and Chuck Lawrence from New York.

I have no idea how this was achieved in those pre internet days! Several auctions were held in the ballroom which were a precursor to later swapmeets, and a visit was also made to the Anton Palau shop in Spain which led to the first significant arrivals of Spanish Scalextric cars in the UK.