His business, Nomad Raceways, rents out portable slot car tracks in 10 sizes, from tabletop to huge (one of Nomad’s portable tracks is currently on a global tour of real-life race tracks with car maker Acura, to help promote the new Acura NSX supercar). Since moving to Arkansas from Southern California a few years back, Cunningham has been on a mission to spread the word locally about the hobby that has been his passion for over 50 years, drawing in both seasoned slot car fans and creating new ones. When you pull into the pits and pull back out, you’ll find that the car feels heavier and is slower.” “This system electronically simulates that. “In the real world, when your car is light on fuel, it’s faster and the brakes work better,” Cunningham said. Brian Chilson PART ENGINEERING, PART COMPETITION: Cunningham wants to inspire a new generation involved in the hobby he loves, both as fans and as competitors. With another programming change, the track can even simulate fuel, including sputtering to a stop when a simulated gas gauge hits E, forcing drivers to periodically pit and pause for a few seconds while the car “fills up,” just like real racing. Robotic police cruisers can chase and block the racers, blue lights flashing. Depending on how the track is programmed, it can even simulate things like random tire punctures, which make your car desperately slow until you come into the pits for a simulated tire change. Push a button on the controller as you approach an x-shaped switch in the track and cars can make lightning quick lane changes to pass slower drivers. Some of the aerodynamic wedge cars in Cunningham’s vast collection of racers can reach a speed of 160 miles per hour and beyond (though most of his cars have a top speed of between 35 and 65 mph). For another, it’s a digital track, the next generation of slot car racing. For one thing, though the mechanics and principle is pretty much the same - a miniature electric raceway where cars follow a groove (the “slot” in slot car racing) in the track, each car’s speed regulated by a pistol-shaped controller with a trigger style throttle - Cunningham’s track is built for bigger cars that are almost a foot long, not the matchbox-sized, lightly-detailed HO-scale cars you might have played with.

Racer slot cars