Tabletop Racing

Racing neck and neck, the yellow car and the red car both managed to scoot across the railway crossing just ahead of a lumbering locomotive. They barreled around a curve and into a straightaway with a traffic light shining green ahead. Just before they reached it, the light winked red, and two trucks that had been waiting at the intersection started across. The red car stopped in time, but the yellow car ran the light and bulleted broadside into one of the trucks.

Its driver was sore, but unhurt. This was fortunate, because he was only ten years old. The near miss with the train and the grisly accident with the truck happened last week on the top of a table in a downstairs room of Toots Shor's restaurant in Manhattan. It was the semifinal of a nationwide contest with a combination game and hobby kit that is beginning to give the electric train a run for its money.

The two-inch cars on the HO-scale track that raced a scale Mille Miglia, safe-driving obstacle course and drag strip for the "Grand National" championship were the products of the Aurora Plastics Corp., which joined with the Ford Motor Co. in organizing an elimination contest enlisting 1,000,000 "drivers"' in 48 states (the state champions ranged in age from eight, for California, to 37 for New York). But Aurora's Model Motoring sets, ranging from $20 to $50 (individual cars are $1.98 or $2.49), are only one of 13 different lines of miniature electric racing cars that already constitute a $25 million business in hobby shops, toy shops and sporting-goods dealers across the U.S. From fairly simple tracks, they are developing into complex courses that tax the driving ability of both adolescents and adults.

One of the best sets is the British-made Scalextric, which costs $49.95 for more than nine feet of track, two variable-speed controllers and two sturdy cars (Grand Prix racers). Strombecker markets models of famous racecourses, has a $29.95 model including a D-Jaguar, a Ferrari Testa Rosa, and a Chicane obstacle strip that permits only one car to pass without risk of a crackup. The A. C. Gilbert Co. sells a figure eight of track with an overpass and two Corvettes for $29.98. Aurora's latest accessories include a lap counter, judge's stand and turnoff, starting gate, grandstand--and a railroad crossing where a train can mash risk-takers.

Grand champion in last week's contest was Henry Harnish Jr., 15, of Whippany, N.J., who estimates that he has raced against 1,000 other tabletop drivers since he started just a year ago. Henry owns more than 25 model cars, switched parts among them to achieve his championship racer. His prize: a white Thunderbird. He will give it to his father, a factory shop foreman, who will sell the family Mercury ('61) and give the money to Henry.

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