Home Racing World

That Monogram ad sure brings back memories; as I have mentioned elsewhere, when my Dad was stationed at Glenview Naval Air Station, the Marine wife in the apartment below us worked at the Morton Grove factory and got a discount.....think I got every one of those 2 or 3 times over for Christmas or birthdays. Think my favorite out of these was the 36 Ford. But don't forget The Black Widow, Green Hornet, Lil Coffin and so on. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

My first TJet was the Sterling Moss figure eight, and it was '61 or '62 The cars were a gray Falcon and a red Fairlane, and we had a brown Fairlane at the time. I looked it up once to see what year that was brand new, but I can never remember when I want to. There were some vibrator cars that were from that Christmas, too. I think I remember the 98 cents price on the little boxes. The TJets I bought in '63 were $1.98. I still have a couple of those boxes.

That issue had Strombecker ads, too. I'll see about adding them tomorrow.

Very cool.

Funny that the Scalextric ad showed two Suits racing and not a couple of kids.
Makes you wonder who was the target market?

Interesting. Remember those types of ads. A long time ago in a different world.

In the picture at the top left showing the Ford Aurora Grand Nationals, you see two heads of hair and a face on the right border of the picture. The face you see to the left of that top face I believe is my friend and eventual 1962 Grand National Champion Henry Harnish from NJ. It was the only year that the "vibrator" type cars were used, and Henry tuned up an Aurora Ford pickup truck for his winning entry. I think he said he was 16 when he won the white 1962 Ford Thunderbird hardtop. He has a picture of himself standing next to the T-Bird along with the large Championship trophy on his HO hobby contact card. Unfortunately, the car is long gone from his family, but the original trophy has been cleaned and polished, and is shown proudly in a custom display case at his HO raceway in his NJ home. He's returned to the hobby many years ago, and is an active and top HO racer to this day! On the right side of the page is the photo of four Aurora cars, including the infamous '58 Chevy Impala that was never made available to the American public. Story goes that the body was an expensive multi-piece affair and deemed not suitable for mass production back in those early days of Model Motoring out of West Hempstead, Long Island, NY (I still live about 20 minutes from where the factory stood). The few that do exist today bring astronomical prices on the collector market.
Thanks for sharing those vintage pages, I'm fortunate (and old) enough to have copies of those early Car Model, Model Car & Track, and Model Car Science magazines, but I'm sure there are many of our HRW friends (especially the younger ones) who don't and have never seen them before. Nice of you to present them here... Thanks again -- Ernie :>)

PS - If you go to <henryharnish.com>, you'll find a picture taken at one of the NJ slot car shows from a few years back. The track you see is an exact duplicate of the one Henry qualified on in 1962 at Rich's Hobby Town in NJ, complete with AC power supply and the earlier version of Aurora's steering wheel controllers. A re-creation race was held and I was fortunate enough to be asked to participate. I'm standing just to Henry's left shoulder (black Aurora shirt, grey hair and eyeglasses) holding my blue w/black top Aurora 1960 Thunderbird car that I used that day. It was a pretty good runner as vibes go, but of course, Henry smoked us all! Lots of fun though, and I believe there is video of the event on you tube somewhere. Enjoy the hobby, and thanks for reading.