In 1972 and 1973, one body painter in the San Francisco area disputed honors for best pro-racing painter in the nation. His inventive and creative art was unique and since then, copied by many. His name: Keiji Kanegawa, familiarly known as "Keiji". Kanegawa introduced accurate portraits, carefully applied with multiple shades of mixed colors, as [...]

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An incredible re-creation of the most important slot car in pro-racing history.
Steve Okeefe was so enthralled by the recent publication of pictures of Gene Husting’s historically-first pro-racing angle-winder chassis that amazingly, survived for 37 years, that he decided to build a perfect replica for use as a display piece in our museum. When I received [...]

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Anyone who knows anything about vintage slot cars also knows that Lancer vacuum-formed bodies were the best, most accurate bodies available in the 1960’s, regardless of material used, and often had greater detail than the best injected bodies.
in 1966, Lancer made several hundreds of dealer display frames with a selection of their bodies, factory painted [...]

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Sorting out the various models
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The Cox Lola T70 is one of the most elusive 1/24 scale slot cars to obtain. Here is some information as to know which one is which.

Confusing picture with lots of different cars and boxes. How can we sort out this mess?
The car was first issued as an export model only [...]

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This Team Russkit box, issued to the original team members, COULD be the sole survivor of a dozen or so. It came with matching polyester jacket, navy blue slacks and tie and white shirt with Russkit patch.

This is Len Vucci’s box. Len was one of the 4 original team members with Mike [...]

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Lots of reproductions of the original BZ Batmobile body out there. Lots of misrepresentation about such thin Lexan bodies mounted over original or Charlie Almond produced chassis copies. What to believe?
Lloyd Asbury built both the BZ (Beck & Zimmerman) forming tools (4 of them, I own one of the original), but also a couple for [...]

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Gene Husting built his (and pro-racing’s) first angle-winder car in late 1967, after he saw a picture of a 1/32 scale car built by Roy Moody in the Midwest. When he showed up at Gallagher’s J&J Raceway in California, the car, fitted with a Lancer McLaren M6 body, was improperly geared, but it showed great [...]

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Larry Shinoda was a senior designer for General Motors under Bill Mitchell, then for the Ford Motor Company. In his vast portfolio are the designs of the Corvette Sting Ray, the Mustang “Boss” and the cast-alloy multi-spoke wheel that was later outrageously copied by the German wheel manufacturer BBS.
Shinoda, an American-born citizen of Japanese origins, [...]

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John Harris of Morristown, New Jersey, was another racer whom, through connections with Charlie Pittman, was supplied with motors and parts to represent the company and slot racing in general throughout the 1966 season.
His home raceway was originally M.C.R. Hobbies in East Hanover, New Jersey, managed by John Woodcock. M.C.R. was a franchisee of American [...]

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American slot car racing legend John Cukras (pronounce “Soo-Krees”) did much to glorify pro-racing when this car won the first Car Model magazine series race in 1967. A story in Rod Custom, illustrated by the famous Tom Daniel who designed many of the Monogram plastic kits, opened the eyes of thousands of young Americans on [...]

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