Model Motoring
In the late 1950s, Aurora acquired the rights to the "Model Motoring" slot car racing system from U.K. toy manufacturer Playcraft. Aurora's first HO-gauge racing sets appeared in the fall of 1960. Following improvements in the chassis with the Thunderjet and A/FX series and the adoption of popular racing car body styles, Aurora's "Model Motoring" race sets became top sellers, with over 25,000,000 cars sold by 1965 (HO Slot Car Racing 1999-2011).
By the end of the 1970s, however, the slot car craze had passed and modeling in general was on the decline (HO Slot Car Racing 1999-2011). One website attributes the decline to both the maturing of the baby-boom generation along with the fragile economics of the slot car industry and the closing of many slot car shops as toy companies offered smaller sets to be used at home (Slotblog 2007).
Read more about this topic: Aurora Plastics Corporation
Famous quotes containing the words model and/or motoring:
“I had a wonderful job. I worked for a big model agency in Manhattan.... When I got on the subway to go to work, it was like traveling into another world. Oh, the shops were beautiful, we had Bergdorf’s, Bendel’s, Bonwit’s, DePinna. The women wore hats and gloves. Another world. At home, it was cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids, going to PTA, Girl Scouts. But when I got into the office, everything was different, I was different.”
—Estelle Shuster (b. c. 1923)
“What I like, or one of the things I like, about motoring is the sense it gives one of lighting accidentally, like a voyager who touches another planet with the tip of his toe, upon scenes which would have gone on, have always gone on, will go on, unrecorded, save for this chance glimpse. Then it seems to me I am allowed to see the heart of the world uncovered for a moment.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)