We had a huge Scalextric set at home. Liberal applications of mum's sewing machine oil to the corners produced interesting tail-out powerslides and lots of spins. At Hunter's Corner in Papatoetoe there was an upstairs slot car track - huge and very fast. It was a commercial track but they had a club there too. These were quite common then, late 60s.

We used to build our own cars, mostly from kitsets but with hot-rodded 26D and 36B (memory partial failure there) by rewinding the amatures. We added more windings I think. Superlightweight plastic bodies with heaps of downforce and wide super-soft foam tyres.

Those things moved like lightning, until you lost downforce and they'd fire off the track like missiles. I built a car based on Grahame Harvey's Elfin 400, taking the shape from photos in Motorman magazine. Unfortunately balsa wood was just too heavy and even with a hot-rodded 36 engine it could barely move itself off the start line. Looked good though.

Good times.