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I'm just getting back into the slot car hobby and don't really know anything about HO. I plan on building mostly oval cars. I found some HO scale Sylvan cars on eBay. Has anyone used the bodies? Are they somewhat "true" to scale?

I want to use this, a 37 Willys sedan.


To make this......This photo was taken in 1967 (door flap opened). This is really a 37 Ford body, but with some chopping and channeling it could look close.
Any thoughts?

You should keep that one intact and have someone cast it in resin. You can make any number of cars from that, and still keep that nice car as scenery. Imagine having 10 or 12 of that car, ultralightweight, expendable if you chop it up wrong, and any number of possibilities for the shell.

If that body was really HO scale it would be a first. HOCOC has a Jalopy class using the Aurora Truck/Hot Rod/Dune Buggy chassis. The tall skinny tires make having a really hot motor less of an advantage. I chopped up this coach body so it looks more like the type of car that was run at Tompson Raceway in the mid '60s.

Rich, I find HO scale to be confusing (but it's good for my brain). There's 1/87, 1/64, 1/76 scales, all considered to be HO. The easiest explanation I found so far is the "chassis" is HO, not necessarily the body. The article I read gave this for a reason: If you have a 1/64th scale VW Bug and you can exchange the VW body for a 1/64 Dodge Charger, they BOTH can't be the same scale. But you are right, that Willys, is a 1/87 scale not 1/64. I really like your coach. What body did you start with? Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have a 10' four lane oval set up, I'm looking forward to building some cars, should be interesting with hands like bigfoot......I too went to Thompson in the 60's. I remember getting a few splinters in my butt, when I slid on the wooden bleachers!....But(t) it was worth it.

We used to go, If I remember correctly:
Friday: Stafford
Saturday: Riverside, Lebanon, Malta or Fonda
Sunday: Thompson

I thank my Dad, who knew NOTHING about cars, for bringing me every week (just to shut me up).

I think that body is from Hot Laps Racin, it is no longer offered, but Resin Dude has a good selection of vintage bodies. I only went to Stafford once in the '60s, it was still dirt at that time and it was VERY cold. They ran out of coffee and hot cocoa long before the main. I did go to Stafford a few times in the early '70's after it was paved. I went to Waterford on Saturday nights and also when they had Wednesday night races. Waterford was still an independant track back then. When I first started going to Thompson they did not have lights, so racing was in the afternoon. In those days the track did not have a wall all the way around it, mostly there were piles of dirt. Once in a while a stray car would go right over the top and land in a swamp. If a car was a backmarker it might not be missed right away! Those were the days when just about every service station, speed shop, marina and chicken farm had some sort of car.