Gaydon

Scenes from the 2011 UK Slot Car Festival at Gaydon

UK Slot Car Festival, Heritage Motor Centre Gaydon

Sunday 22nd May 2011

Official 2011 UK Slot Car Festival poster

After the two successful events in 2010 Pendle, Scale Models and Roger Barker put their heads together and decided that it would be sensible to combine their knowledge and efforts into staging one huge event the following year combining all the best elements of their predecessors.

First hurdle to overcome was finding suitable premises. The NSCC, Haynes and Brooklands events were too far south to attract people from the whole country while Brooklands and Donington shared a common disadvantage of being too small with much of the event being held in the open air. Fortunately they had all been blessed with fine weather but there was no guarantee this would continue and rain could prove disastrous.

British Motor Museum

Various options were explored including the Donington Exhibition Centre (centrally located but too expensive) and the NEC in Birmingham (astronomically expensive) before settling on the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, built on the site of a former RAF airfield in South Warwickshire, which was once home to the Rover Group's design, technology and testing ground.

Plans were drawn up and construction began in 1991 for the new Heritage Motor Centre. Set in 65 acres of grounds, the centre provides exhibition and storage space for the collection of over 250 British Leyland vehicles and an archive of over 2 million photographs, business records, brochures and drawings. Over the years the collection has expanded to include all of the companies that have formed part of Britain's motor manufacturing history.

Gaydon
The high-tech, shining silver facade of the British Motor Museum
The British Motor Museum at Gaydon

Decline

Personally I find the museum somewhat depressing as what it actually chronicles is the decline and fall of the once thriving British motor industry due to a combination of incompetent management, bolshie unions and government interference. When you look beyond the magnificent display of cars, view the rejected original designs of the genius Alex Issigonis and read how he was eventually sidelined to working in a garden shed it makes you want to weep. However, there is no denying the appeal of the museum as a whole with over 300 classic cars on display at any one time.

Gaydon
A room full of cars from many periods at the British Motor Museum
Just some of the many cars exhibited at the British Motor Museum

Advantages

Gaydon really ticked all the boxes:

The Big Day

Many months of work followed as all the various aspects were put in place but finally, after years of experimentation the very first proper UKSF arrived: Sunday 22nd May 2011 UK Slot Car Festival, Heritage Motor Centre Gaydon The quantity and variety of the exhibits was truly mind boggling:

Actual manufacturers present were:

Other manufacturers were represented by their distributors with samples / test tracks & literature available:

There was a huge swapmeet with at least 30 traders tables.

The major slot car clubs had a significant presence with information and free to play tracks:

Publications present at the event:

Presentations by:

A slot car auction was held by Astons.

All this plus more slot car tracks and demonstrations than you could shake a stick at! It was virtually impossible to get round everything in one day.

Of course, being a new venture, there were some teething problems, primarily due to a lack of signage and the museums inability to process the entry in a timely fashion which led to queues of more than hour to get in. The swapmeet was also extremely crowded but overall the event was a huge success and the small niggles were easily sorted out in successive years.

Expansion

By 2014 the festival had expanded into a two day event and the rest, as they say, is history. It has been refined each year with different aspects added and is now the premier slot car event in Europe with average attendance around the 5000 mark. It was sadly missed in this virus blighted year but should be back next year bigger and better. Sean and his fellow organisers are to be congratulated for their foresight and dedication to the cause. Way back in 2005 Gareth Jex and the NSCC committee had no idea what would eventually emerge from that first tentative venture. Truly, from little acorns.................

The events from 2012 onwards have been adequately covered elsewhere so I don't need to give a full run down on them. There are plenty of YouTube videos available, the NSCC Journal always carries a report and there is a dedicated section on SFI about each one. Unfortunately the continued disintegration of the SFI software combined with the incompetence of its commercial owners has led to the disappearance of large parts of the photo content but there is still plenty to read.

I hope you have enjoyed this trip down memory lane and perhaps I shall see you at the 2021 UKSF. To finish, here is a photo montage of the 2011 show provided by the NSCC. How many faces do you recognise?

Gaydon
A montage of photographs from the 2011 event
A photo montage of the 2011 show provided by the NSCC

Guides

Two of Slot Car Magazine's souvenir guides to the UKSCF can still be bought from Pendle Slot Racing in their original paper format...

| 2013 Guide | 2014 Guide |

... and they have also kindly made three of the guides available as free PDFs

| 2012 Guide | 2013 Guide | 2014 Guide |