Slot car racing was born in the early 1900s, but the hobby languished until the 1950s, when English entrepreneurs began to build electrified tracks and controllable scale-model cars to race on them.
Kids began frequenting tracks where, for only a few dollars, they could spend hours racing with their pals. As the fad peaked and then waned, slot car businesses found themselves unable to turn a profit charging teenagers small amounts of money to use their large tracks.
By the early 1970s, slot car centers — like the once-prevalent ice-skating rinks, bowling alleys, pool halls and miniature golf courses that also required a large real estate footprint — were folding. Fewer than 200 tracks were still in business by 1975, and gradually most of those closed, too.
