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Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.
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Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

Posted January 26, 2016 9:00 AM by dstrohl
Pathfinder Tags: hobby raceway racing slot car

In the interest of full disclosure, I've been holding out on you. I've never discussed my collection of historically significant racing cars, nor have I revealed that I have access to my own year-round testing, development and racing facility.

The cars under my stewardship include a Lotus Type 49, as driven by Jim Clark in South Africa in 1968; the John Wyer Ford GT40 Mk I that won Le Mans in 1969; a short-tail Porsche 917, as driven by Helmut Marko and Gijs van Lennep in 1971; a Cobra Daytona Coupe, which finished second overall at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1965; the Porsche 956 driven by Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti and Philippe Alliot to a third-place finish at Le Mans in 1983; and even a Bud Moore Trans Am Mustang, as raced by George Follmer. All are in good condition, though many carry the scars of on-track battles well fought, and all are exercised on a regular basis.

A Hemming's author confesses his love for slot-car racing.

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SolarEagle
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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

01/26/2016 2:10 PM
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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

01/26/2016 5:11 PM



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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

01/26/2016 10:24 PM

and
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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

01/27/2016 4:52 AM

My dad and older brother used to race these when I was a kid. I still have the track and some of the old cars.
Modern slot cars are like comparing a Ferrari to a Cavalier.

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Janissaries
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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

01/27/2016 4:39 PM

Everybody won their very first race.

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redfred
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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

01/30/2016 8:54 AM

Just as I thought. Unless the car is eligible for a "Pebble Beach" type of car show, Hemmings knows next to nothing.

This is from a racing association.

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lyn
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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

01/30/2016 10:50 AM

Bit snooty aren't we?

Having raced (and wrecked both) full sized NASCAR cars at PIR and slot cars long ago, I will say that slot cars are MUCH more difficult to control. Power to weight ratio being off the scale with slot cars.

But, very few things are more fun than driving a full sized race car at well over 100 MPH going into a turn.

Give the guy a break, he's having fun and that's all that counts.
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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

01/30/2016 11:23 AM

I tried hard to not denigrate the fun of slot car racing. I believe I succeeded in my efforts. I and several other CR4 members find the title annoying.

As for your comment that I'm being more snooty than Hemmings, I doubt that is possible.

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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

01/30/2016 11:57 AM

OK, you, and Brave Sir Robin, live far enough north to know about winter.

The rest of us from California, Florida and Arizona don't know snow.

With the exception of SE, the rest of us can drive for less than two hours and be in feet of snow in the winter. And then come home again.

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Brave Sir Robin
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Re: Who Says You Can't Race in Winter?

02/01/2016 12:04 PM

I took my motorcycle license road test in falling snow with 4 inches of new snow on the ground in Massachusetts. I had a little 1971 Honda CL175 scrambler with trials tires on it that was a blast to ride on snow-packed roads. (I had no access to a car at the time . . . ) My friends' parents all thought I was certifiable to ride year-round and in the snow.

The RMV (Registry of Motor Vehicles) examiner was more than just a little bit incredulous that this pimply kid even showed up in the middle of snow storm. He said that since I made it and was still alive, he said he should just issue it to me on the spot. We went through the formalities anyways. I had my permit for almost a year and it was about to expire so the day before my 17th birthday (Dec 10), I got my license. When I did the figure-8 behind the building in the fresh snow with feet on the pegs, the maneuver was easy to see.

The pic is not mine but it was otherwise identical except I had a luggage rack behind the seat.

The seat was low enough to the ground that I got pretty good at 'flat-tracking' around corners when it was a nice fresh-packed snow and it was light enough not to just fall over if it started to get a little too much sideways. Yeah, I was a nut. Was?
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