SlotRacer Forum

Full Version: Visit to Los Angeles Slot Car Museum
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
Maurizio Ferrari of Slot.It recently visited the LASCM.    
The English language summary of Mauro's visit can be viewed here:-  Linky

[attachment=2718]
Photo by Maurizio Ferrari. All credit to him for this
I just get a blank page from that link.
Works for me Gordon Cool
Hmm...no matter which way I try I still can't see it!! Different browsers or via a Facebook link Tappingfoot
Perhaps copy/paste will work or go to the top domain:

https://www.tsrfcars.com/maurizio_ferrar..._lascm.htm   
www.tsrfcars.com/maurizio_ferrari_visits_the_lascm.htm

https://www.tsrfcars.com

Edit: I just tried the top domain but could not find Maurizio's article.
Here is the original Italian version which translates well using Chrome.   http://autopiste.info/lascm-los-angeles-...ar-museum/

Leo
Thanks. The Italian bit works. Here is a translation by DeepL. I couldn't be bothered to put all the pics in the right place. I trust me putting this here doesn't break any rules.

I arrived in Los Angeles in 1980 when I was still a teenager with some zits. I was the guest of a friend, Lynn, who was a few years older than me and was a dog sitter in a villa in Beverly Hills, opposite the residence of Gene Hackman. A good start to a holiday that you will read about sooner or later in the Mauritian Chronicles.


The image of Lynn's blue Ford Pinto moving away, after unloading me at the airport, re-emerges vividly as I leave my luggage delivery in the warm California sun. Forty years have passed. I try to get away from the melancholy of the memory of the teenager's summers spent in the USA and smell the air: there is the same smell of thirty years ago, mixed with that of kerosene, the same reinforced concrete pillars, the same road, the same bright light.

Los Angeles Slot Car Museum
I am in Los Angeles to meet who is probably the greatest collector of slot cars in the world, Scott Bader, and to visit a place out of the ordinary: the Los Angeles Slot Car Museum, where I enter thanks to my friendship with Philippe de Lespinay, who is the curator of the museum.
[attachment=2729]

The museum is not open to the public but can be accessed only by asking permission, as is normal to do when entering the house of others: the museum is located inside Mr. Bader's house, entrepreneur in the construction industry, collector of cars in scale 1:1, and excellent driver of historic cars.

Philippe de Lespinay's story is the story of the American dream: a multifaceted artist and driver who came from France to the USA in 1970, relying solely on his own talents, he was the protagonist and witness of what, in the second half of the 20th century, was the explosion of a movement that had no equal in any other hobby. All of America, from Florida to Alaska, was crazy about slot cars. A mass phenomenon, imposing a social and commercial tsunami. The museum traces its history from its origins and gradually focusing on the history of the boom of the '60s up to the present day, the modern wing cars, but always keeping the goal on the evolution of slot racing in the U.S..

Don't think about the collection of an eccentric, and evidently wealthy, gentleman: the Los Angeles Slot Car Museum is a rationally planned collection, a place where the history of the world of electric tracks made in USA in the 1/32 and 1/24 scales is preserved and told.

I believe that only the union of Philippe's historical knowledge with Scott Bader's vision could have created such a collection.

The museum is structured on two floors: at the base is the archive, in which thousands and thousands of parts, variations and rarities of all kinds are collected and catalogued, as in the basement of a self-respecting museum. The archive is accessed through an armoured door from the vault of a bank. Strictly perhaps not essential, but, let me say, "crazy cool"!

Inside the museum itself, impeccable in every part, is an atmosphere with humidity and controlled temperature, while on the multi-screen monitor that occupies the wall in front of the entrance run the images of a race, in the windows, illuminated in a perfect way, unwinds the history of slot cars. From the first cars tied to a track, to the diesel 'rail cars', to the birth and explosion, to the collapse and rebirth, the world of slot cars passes before my eyes through a century of history. The quantity and selection of the material is impressive: unique examples in 'mint boxed' conditions, technical curiosities, up to the personal cases of famous drivers and the official ones of Team Russkit: the world of slot racing had evolved with professional drivers who, as such, were represented, including race uniforms.

As for Italy, 'honorable mention' for Unicar, Mini Dream, and, last but not least, Policar, well represented with plastic models and very rare models in acetate, all in 1/24.

 I thank Scott, I thank Philippe, and I come out that the sun is setting. On the corner of Sunset Boulevard, a girl with blatantly pink hair and her friend with an exaggeratedly hairy coat walk framed by the photographer. 

[attachment=2730][attachment=2731][attachment=2732][attachment=2733][attachment=2734][attachment=2735][attachment=2736][attachment=2737][attachment=2728]

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator with a few adjustments by another!