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Rich,
to answer your request, this was a long time ago but I noted what I believe to be erroneous in your story:
"Cox became AMRAC (American Racecraft), AMRAC was owned by Jim Kirby. The KM-2 cars appear to be nearly the same as Cox cars and the Cox track system carried over to AMRAC, Rokar and Life-Like."
I would correct this: "The Cox HO car tooling was purchased by Jim Russell at the auction of the Cox's company's assets when it collapsed in 1982. This was modified by Russell and his friends (Kirby and Cukras I assume) to become the AMRAC HO car, using also the same Porsche, Datsun and the two Can-Am bodies from the Cox cars."
The little "magnetic wings" were enlarged, but I am not so sure that their effectiveness was affected. As far as where they were made, it is obvious that there was a big move to mainland China in the early 1980s, so I am not surprised of the change as Hong Kong manufacturing was likely more expensive.
I do not know anything about RoKar, so I cannot comment.
The Cox HO cars were commissioned by Leisure Dynamics of Canada and they flew me (first class!) to Ontario to do the design and engineering. I wanted a completely new car but they said no, they just wanted a "G-Plus" clone, it was very disappointing as I had a really good design! So I "cloned" the G-Plus and added that slide-in guide because they did not want to add an extra metal piece, but I convinced them to let me add those "magnetic wings" because the car could by driven faster in corners without de-slotting, allowing the car to slide at a greater angle. That was my contribution in improving the G-Plus.
But they used mediocre armatures and magnets, so the cars were never as fast as the G-Plus.
The bodies were copied in a smaller scale from the ones I had devised for the "SuperScale" 1/40 scale cars, including my own Can-Am designs which of course were pure fantasy, that is until the 1974 Shadow Can-Am was shown to the public, and looked quite similar!
The LASCM museum in Los Angeles does not cater to the HO scale, so does not have much in that size. But it does have a lot of the SuperScale cars and their hand-built prototypes.
In the book, "Slot Car Dreams" commissioned by the LASCM, I spent a few pages on HO, Aurora, Dynamic, Riggen and Cox, because the invention of magnetic traction is so important to the whole hobby today, since Chinese-built slot cars are far too light to have enough down force on their rear tires without the crutch that magnets provide,
This is the prototype car and the drawing shown in the book, of what is believed to be the first slot car with a traction magnet. The drawing is dated 11/5/1970.
![Tire Wheel Vehicle Car Automotive tire]()
![Schematic Rectangle Font Parallel Engineering]()
to answer your request, this was a long time ago but I noted what I believe to be erroneous in your story:
"Cox became AMRAC (American Racecraft), AMRAC was owned by Jim Kirby. The KM-2 cars appear to be nearly the same as Cox cars and the Cox track system carried over to AMRAC, Rokar and Life-Like."
I would correct this: "The Cox HO car tooling was purchased by Jim Russell at the auction of the Cox's company's assets when it collapsed in 1982. This was modified by Russell and his friends (Kirby and Cukras I assume) to become the AMRAC HO car, using also the same Porsche, Datsun and the two Can-Am bodies from the Cox cars."
The little "magnetic wings" were enlarged, but I am not so sure that their effectiveness was affected. As far as where they were made, it is obvious that there was a big move to mainland China in the early 1980s, so I am not surprised of the change as Hong Kong manufacturing was likely more expensive.
I do not know anything about RoKar, so I cannot comment.
The Cox HO cars were commissioned by Leisure Dynamics of Canada and they flew me (first class!) to Ontario to do the design and engineering. I wanted a completely new car but they said no, they just wanted a "G-Plus" clone, it was very disappointing as I had a really good design! So I "cloned" the G-Plus and added that slide-in guide because they did not want to add an extra metal piece, but I convinced them to let me add those "magnetic wings" because the car could by driven faster in corners without de-slotting, allowing the car to slide at a greater angle. That was my contribution in improving the G-Plus.
But they used mediocre armatures and magnets, so the cars were never as fast as the G-Plus.
The bodies were copied in a smaller scale from the ones I had devised for the "SuperScale" 1/40 scale cars, including my own Can-Am designs which of course were pure fantasy, that is until the 1974 Shadow Can-Am was shown to the public, and looked quite similar!
The LASCM museum in Los Angeles does not cater to the HO scale, so does not have much in that size. But it does have a lot of the SuperScale cars and their hand-built prototypes.
In the book, "Slot Car Dreams" commissioned by the LASCM, I spent a few pages on HO, Aurora, Dynamic, Riggen and Cox, because the invention of magnetic traction is so important to the whole hobby today, since Chinese-built slot cars are far too light to have enough down force on their rear tires without the crutch that magnets provide,
This is the prototype car and the drawing shown in the book, of what is believed to be the first slot car with a traction magnet. The drawing is dated 11/5/1970.
