Veteran HO Slot Car racers have fond memories of the Scranton, PA mail order house, Auto World. Before personal computers, email and the Internet, HO racers ordered the latest and greatest HO speed parts by mail! After poring over the catalog, filling out the order form and mailing off a check we'd wait for what seemed like an eternity for our precious package to arrive.
Auto World closed its door many years ago. Oscar Kovaleski, the owner, retired and the HO slot car hobby was less one of its original marketing forces. Not only was Oscar an avid HO slot car racer himself, he also owned a McLaren M8B which he raced in the American CanAm series. His distinctive McLaren with an Aurora Model Motoring slot car track painted on the fenders was a fixture in the early years of the CanAm series. Aurora even honored him by reproducing his No. 54 car for their then new Aurora Factory Experimental (A/FX) line.
In recent years the American entrepreneur Thomas E. Lowe started a new company called Playing Mantis. Playing Mantis specialized in auto-related products including die-cast model cars, plastic model kits and HO scale slot cars. Playing Mantis marketed its line of slot car offerings under the Johnny Lightning brand name.
Playing Mantis was a great success and several years ago the entire company was acquired by Racing Champions, a maker of inexpensive metal die-cast model cars. Racing Champions had no interest in manufacturing and marketing slot cars, so the Johnny Lightning division of the company was sold back to Tom Lowe, with the understanding that he could sell off the existing stock of Johnny Lightning products, but when they were gone all subsequent new products could not use the Johnny Lightning name.
Tom Lowe is now focusing entirely on manufacturing HO slot cars. He has received Oscar Kovaleski's blessing to use the Auto World name for his new brand of HO Slot Cars. Tom has grand plans for his new Auto World brand. Gone though are the days of a mail order catalog. Instead Tom will focus on the manufacturing of new and unique HO scale slot car products. Marketing will be left to retailers and hobby dealers such as myself.
Along with producing new HO slot cars, Auto World will also release a series of race sets later this fall, in time for the Christmas season. Auto World race sets will include Tomy-compatible track. Expansion will be a snap for those racers wishing to build larger more challenging raceways.
The first new offerings from Auto World are HO slot cars using a new and improved version of the ThunderJet 500 and XTraction chassis that were so successful for Playing Mantis. These new chassis are smooth-running and much easier to drive than the original JL releases.
See the Cars For Sale section to purchase these new models. All are in stock and ready to ship. Auto World also offers Rolling Chassis and Pit Kits to repair their slot cars.
See The Hop-Up Parts list at the bottom of this page for Pickup Shoes and Silicone Tires to improve the handling performance of your Auto World slot cars. I also stock several specialty Tools that make working on these chassis much easier.
Auto World HO slot car body shells can also be fitted to the original Aurora T-Jet, A/FX, G+Plus, Magna-Traction and all Tomy chassis. ThunderJet 500 releases have two body mounting screws that allow them to be fastened to the 1:76 scale Aurora T-Jet chassis, while the XTraction releases fit all other Aurora and Tomy 1:64 scale chassis.
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