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Slot-Car Racing Fans Learn
To Enjoy Life in the Fast Lane

(See Corrections & Amplification item below.)

CHICAGO -- Andrew Treppa hurtled his red Ferrari around a corner at top speed, before a competitor blew past.

"Look, that car just switched lanes," said the 8-year-old, as he kneeled on his parents' living-room floor, gunning the hand-held accelerator as he raced against a 5-inch-long computer-controlled car.

This isn't the slot-car set you might remember from when you were a kid.

Slot-car racing -- a hobby in which tiny electric cars race around a plastic track with grooves, or slots, to keep the cars on course -- is making a big comeback. For decades, the hobby has been dominated by middle-aged men who grew up racing in their basements. Now, a new generation of kids is being drawn in by Nascar-mania and new digital technology that enables the cars to switch lanes, pull into a pit area to "refuel" and even race a number of cars in the same lane.

Andrew, a second-grader who has both kinds of sets, prefers his newfangled one. "This is funner," he says.

Ed "Junkyard Dog" Kavanaugh isn't so sure. The 53-year-old auto-repair-shop manager and his friends grew up racing the old-style cars, and he has a collection of 400 of them. One Friday recently, he and 15 other men gathered in his basement in Elgin, Ill., for the final night of their racing series.

A four-lane racetrack laid out on an 8-foot-by-16-foot table took up a whole room. An adjacent room was filled with oil, paints and tools. There, Mr. Kavanaugh repairs his mostly vintage slot cars and builds new ones. Another room serves as a pit area where the men lube their cars and clean tires between heats.

Over soda, chips and a chocolate cake made by Mr. Kavanaugh's wife, Mary Anne, they worked on their cars, talked trash and raced into the wee hours.

Mr. Kavanaugh is unimpressed by the new cars, which can't be as easily modified or tuned up like old ones. Furthermore, the new tracks aren't standardized, so one manufacturer's car doesn't work on another's track.

"If you're 20 and new to it, the digital stuff is probably the best thing since apple pie, but I want no part of it," he says, pulling his full-size Chrysler PT Cruiser into the driveway of his house.

The hobby got its start in England in the late 1950s. By the '60s, slot-car sets were all the rage in American basements, and racing facilities were abundant. The cars came in different sizes, including the 3-inch-long H.O. -- which stands for Half-O, or half the size of O-gauge, a size designation borrowed from model trains -- and the larger 1:32 scale, which means the car is 1/32 the size of a real car.

But the hobby started to fall out of favor in the '70s, as higher-tech toys like radio-controlled cars and Atari game systems grew popular.

The pastime has a green light once again.

Greg Bosak, owner of Chicagoland Hobby, had stopped carrying slot cars until three years ago, when the new sets arrived. With them, a signal from the controller is sent to a digital chip embedded in the car, enabling all sorts of maneuvers not possible with the old sets.

At Mr. Bosak's store, the new sets run from $250 to $500, in contrast to $40 to $150 for the older ones. Although he sells both kinds, Mr. Bosak says it's the digital variety that's driving the big sales increase his slot-car sets have experienced since 2005.

Sales Jump

Between 2000 and 2007, sales of slot cars to mass retailers like Target Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Costco Wholesale Corp. and Toys "R" Us Inc. almost doubled, to about $50 million, estimates Alan Hess, president of slot-car manufacturer Carrera of America. Sales to hobby shops and specialty toy stores more than doubled, to about $18 million.

When Mike Coleman and his dad saw the crowds of people who race go-karts at a Nascar speedpark in a St. Louis mall, they decided to open a Nascar-theme slot-car racing track there three years ago.

Two years ago, Mr. Coleman, 23, quit his construction job and moved to Gurnee, Ill., where he opened MC Speedway in a shopping mall. People pay $4 to race 1:32-scale cars on an old-fashioned slot track for five minutes. The place is packed on the weekends with children's birthday parties and first-time racers who have never seen slot cars before. The store sells home digital sets and kits that can convert old cars to digital.

Zack Murphy, 9, and his 7-year-old brother, Max, made their second trip to the Gurnee Mills MC Speedway one recent Saturday. During the five minutes they raced their dad and a few strangers, their eyes didn't leave the cars racing around the gigantic track.

Their dad won, and the two brothers tied for last place. But they weren't discouraged. "I love going fast," Zack said. Max has plans to attend a friend's birthday party at another slot-car speedway.

Some longtime slot-car enthusiasts recognize the need to open the hobby to new entrants. Paul Reeve, national director of the H.O. Professional Racing Association, will hold a race for children at its national racing championship in June for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Hooked on Racing

About six years ago, Bob "Father Bob" Dunkle, a 54-year-old retired computer-company owner, walked into an Elmhurst, Ill., hobby shop. He saw a white 1970s Chevron racing car that looked so realistic he thought it was a metal die-cast model. He was shocked when he realized it was a slot car. "That was it. I got hooked," says Mr. Dunkle, who had raced slot cars when he was a kid.

Soon, guys in his suburban Chicago neighborhood started coming up to him, saying, "I heard you have a slot-car set in your basement," Mr. Dunkle recalls.

He and his friends started a racing club that eventually numbered 55 people. Now, smaller groups meet in one of their basements every other Friday, as they did recently at Mr. Kavanaugh's.

Many fans of the old-school cars are skeptical or opposed to the new sets. So when Mr. Kavanaugh agreed to give digital slot-car racing a try at a Chicago hobby shop recently, Mr. Dunkle was incredulous. "When he told me he was going to race digital cars, I said, 'I have to see this,' " Mr. Dunkle says.

Standing above the small racetrack, the two men pressed the trigger on their controllers and their 5-inch-long cars were off. Mr. Dunkle's red Ferrari passed Mr. Kavanaugh's white BMW and pulled into his lane. "How'd you change lanes?" Mr. Kavanaugh asked. Mr. Dunkle showed him the button on the back of the controller.

Mr. Kavanaugh got even by ramming his car into the back of Mr. Dunkle's. "So, I can change lanes and keep running into you?" Mr. Kavanaugh said. "Maybe I am liking this."

Write to Julie Jargon at julie.jargon@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

The H.O. Professional Racing Association will hold a race for children at its national racing championship in June for the first time in nearly 20 years. A previous version of this article incorrectly said it would be the association's first such race for children.

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