Vintage Slot Cars

Rating:
Summary: Greatly needed and much appreciated....
Review: Beautiful color photos are on almost every page of this book, covering the "golden age" of slot cars (roughly coinciding with the '60's)Those of us old enough to remember those glory days (never mind how old!)will drool over the shots of the Cox, KB, and Monogram cars (and probably bore to tears those around us with long speeches about how things were in the "good old days")The "backbone" of the home slot racer, Strombecker,is well represented here as its earlier British counterpart,Scalextric. The fact that remainders of the Cox inventory wound up in land-fills will bring tears to the eyes of many of us...The book is worth the price for the photos alone, with the excellent text being icing on the cake. Not as comprensive as I would have liked but you can have everything... one minor criticism being some models are given significant coverage in the text, with no photos of them presented. But man, this old slot car racer has loved every mintue spent browsing, and remembering, with this book....

Rating:
Summary: Self-aggrandizing fluff
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Self-aggrandizing fluff
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Found the book to be dissappointing
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: For the vintage reader
Review: 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.