Check Out Custom Slot Car Racing Featuring 'Animal House,' Mad Magazine

Slot Mods Racing's Mad Cave Raceway
Mad Cave Raceway's Slot Car Track Has a Film Theme


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  • For kids of all ages with money to burn, may we interest you in some incredibly detailed 1:32 scale custom slot car tracks?

  • Slot Mods Racing has produced plenty of real-world-inspired slot car tracks, but the company's latest brings together The Blues Brothers, Animal House, Mad Magazine, and other pop culture icons to the small stage.

  • These customer tracks start at $75,000 and come with hand-built tracks, scenery and people, and six cars to race with.

Some people have all the fun. One such person appears to be David Beattie, the founder of Slot Mods Racing, a company that hand-builds bespoke 1:32 scale wooden raceways. We've featured his modified slot car tracks before, but his latest creation deserves a fresh look.

Normal—if we can use the word—Slot Mods Raceways tracks are designed to mimic the look and feel of real-world race tracks. The team calls these Custom Scenic Megatracks and has created a 10-foot diameter Pebble Beach raceway and a 9-by-15-foot Lotman Laguna Raceway, for example. Because of space limitations, the scale versions of real-world tracks that Slot Mods creates "are built to the "spirit" rather than being a perfect replica," the company said. The newest Slot Mods track couldn't be modeled on anything that exists in the real world and instead takes inspiration from a dive deep into decades-old pop culture.

Called the Mad Cave Raceway, this new track combines famous movie scenes including the float parade gone haywire scene from Animal House and references to The Blues Brothers alongside billboards for Mad Magazine and Spy vs. Spy. Beattie posted on LinkedIn that Evil Knievel and John Belushi also make appearances. A childhood's worth of enjoyment is now contained in a model slot car universe. Some people have all the fun.



Slot Mods' Custom Scenic Megatracks are not cheap, with the custom builds starting at $75,000. The final price is based on size, complexity, and scenic elements, and if that's too rich for your blood, the company offers a six-by-12-foot Standard Scenic Raceway basic offering that starts at $50,000. If you just want to focus on racing slot cars and not as much on the landscape they're racing in, Slot Mods offers a four-by-eight-foot flat-pack Origins Series raceway.



But the real fun here is in the (admittedly expensive) customization. While the standard Megatrack components including cars, scenery and buildings - are built to 1:32 scale, 1:24 scale cars can also be used. Each Megatrack comes standard with hand-painted wooden tracks, as well as "period-correct grandstands, structures, signs and advertising banners, aluminum Armco railing, hand-carved and painted landscaping, shrubs and trees, lap timing system and PC tablet, slot car controllers, variable power supply, LED base lighting, and six slot cars," according to the company's FAQ. You can also add external LCD monitors, tablet computer controllers, and POV-in-car cameras.

The Mad Cave Raceway proves that the FAQ needs at least one update. The page currently says Slot Mods would like to be able to offer custom-made slot cars in the future, but we can't help but notice that scale Cake Float car zipping between Ray's Music Exchange and signs showing Alfred E. Neuman. Fun times.

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