WORLD RECORDS

Largest and Smallest Slot Cars

Which are the largest and smallest slot cars?  An obvious enough question.  It would be interesting to hear any claims to have the largest and smallest - here’s a few examples of the larger and smaller ones that already exist.   It would be very interesting to hear about any examples that are more extreme - or better than just hearing about it, full details I can publish on this page!  I’ve included examples of large and small cars that fall outside the normal definition of a slot car.

If you know more please contact

Smallest

A good claim to the title of the smallest  slot car is a  Moose nano charger car converted to run on HO track, I don’t have exact size, it’s about 25 mm long and 14mm wide, in fact the widest part is the pick up contacts that have protrude beyond the sides of the body  to each  the pick up rails            

The smallest scale slot cars  in common use are HO.   The H0 cars normally raced are somewhere around 1/64 scale,  although some are built to 1/87 scale such as the Owner's Micro Slot Car Basic Set from Takara Tomy, with cars down to 47.2mm long, 18.4 wide.

Unpowered Cars

Slot cars have a motor driving the wheels.  When making an even smaller slot car a major challenge is the even smaller motor to drive the wheels.   That challenge can be avoided by departing from the normal definition of a slot car.  
Smaller model cars can be made to move along a miniature roadway  by fitting motor(s) to the track instead of in the car.  This technique is sometimes used to provide moving cars on model railway layouts.  Here’s an example from Melbourne, Australia, tiny unpowered model car  are shown in this video.  The cars are shown working with a T gauge (3mm) model railway in this video.    The cars are normally 1:220 and 1:300 and are various sizes down to 12mm long.  The track is fitted with linear motors, and the unpowered cars have magnets attached.  The magnets are pulled along by the linear motors in the track. Magnetic attraction also guides the car round the slotless track.

Mads Aggerholm has posted a video of his claim to the smallest model raceway, this shows model MINIs are about 22mm long. The scale is quoted as 1/160.  The cars are not motorised, they run on a specially built 2 lane track which incorporates a chain under each slot.  Each chains is driven by an electric motors Each cars has a pin attached to it, which goes up through the slot and attaches to the chain which pulls the cars round the track.  This is not what is normally meant by a “slot car”. Motorising the track in this way avoids the challenge of providing  the very small motor, running gear and pick ups that a miniature slot car would need.

Largest

The largest scale slot cars  in common use are 1/24.  Plenty of large static kits have been converted to slot cars, large American cars in 1/24 can be up to about 250mm long.  

There are some 1/12 scale slot cars raced in the USA, here’s a video of an example.   As 1/12  is a widely used scale for radio controlled racing, bodies, wheels, tyres etc. are easily available.

Some even larger ones:-

Copyright ©  2019, 2022  British Slot Car Racing Association   Photos copyright C.Frost  All rights reserved

Of course it all depends on what you mean by slot cars.    Here’s an example of an amusement park ride - slot guided electric powered cars big enough for 4 people to ride on.   Certainly much larger than anything that would fit on a normal slot car track, but  is that sort of thing really a slot car?

  Here’s an example of an even larger slot vehicle built by Martin De’Ath that  work on standard 1/32 plastic track