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.
It's a good bet that nobody reading this doesn't still have some muscle memory of squeezing the trigger of a slot car controller just enough to power their car through a turn but not so much that the car goes flying off the track. Maybe it was the neighbor kid's track that you raced on after school. Maybe your childhood track is still in a cardboard box up in the attic. Or maybe you took slot car racing more seriously than that by scratchbuilding thingies, winding your own motors, and setting up entire dioramas. Whatever the case, while slot car racing remains a distant memory for some, it's still capturing enthusiasts' attention and creating serious gearheads nowadays.
How serious? Let's start with a 2016 profile of Frank "Buzz" Perri of Brooklyn's Buzz-a-rama, which unfortunately closed earlier this year. Despite the ultimate fate of Buzz-a-rama, the profile is a timeless tale of exactly what it is about the hobby that can draw in youth and that can keep one man involved in it long after his contemporaries gave it up.