I'm looking at writing a piece on the early days of Slot Car Racing in New Zealand from the 1960's and 1970's. This was the first golden age of Slot Car Racing and I was involved in it with a group of young school mates. Coming from Auckland, we had two great commercial raceways that I recall well, as we ran our cars on them many times. "Pit Stop" was upstairs off Queen Street where the old "Regent/Plaza"? Theatre was and later "McDonalds" replaced it. This was haloed ground to us. It was a somewhat dimly lit mecca, that had three big wooden tracks. The atmosphere was fantastic, with great pictures on the wall including a beautifully painted picture of Graham Hill's 1966 Indy winning Lola. In the flood lit glass cases at the counter were all manner of exquisite looking slot cars for sale.

We also raced at Martin's Toy Shops, Custom's Street track that featured a complete loop, and if your car wasn't quick enough it would fall from the top of the spiral...

"Pit Stop" was the meeting ground though and it was run by a young guy I recall, who was very cool and drove a Holden Monaro, which just about made him capable of walking on water from a young boys perspective then. We were also into all the wonderful slot car kits available at the time from legendary makers such as Monogram, Cox and the great Japanese ones like Tokyo Plamo. There was also a very vibrant Kiwi slot car gear industry at the time, with various manufacturers such as "Checkpoint" and Royal and several others.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has photograhs of this era, particulary of the commercial raceways in New Zealand and of the cars and equipment available at the time. My name is Gerard Richards and I can be reached by e-mail on mairangiman@hotmail.com I also look forward to anyone posting anything interesting on this thread if they have it. Thanks