Scalextric Digital, Analogue and Micro Scalextric at Slotcarcentre.co.uk

Introduction
Cheddar's Scalextric Slot Car Centre has been operating since the dawn of digital slot car racing in 2004. We run this web shop, which now incorporates the digitalslotcar.co.uk site, and Scalextric Digital circuits for public and club use, based on the Scalextric Sport Digital (SSD) System.

SSD, the Scalextric Digital product, is a brand name of the British company Hornby plc (also the model railway people), the brand having been in existence for over 50 years since it was established by Fred Francis' Minimodels company in 1957. The products are all still British-designed, but now assembled abroad.

Contact Us - by Phone or Email

If you have any questions, telephone Martin on 01934 743250, place a Skype call to "bayrosehouse" - (check online status on left) or drop Martin an email.

We do not have a physical shop you can browse, but it is sometimes possible to arrange to collect items you have ordered on-line, and earn yourself a small discount on the price equivalent to the shipping cost. You would need to telephone to make the necessary arrangements.

About Us
We are part of modelmotorracing.com, a digital track and club facility which you can find out more about here. We don't stock the wide range of analogue cars made by companies such as Fly, Ninco, Slot.It and so on, that you will find at other slot car retaliers, as we prefer to specialise in the UK Scalextric-brand digital system and some compatible products from other manufacturers.

Unless otherwise stated all items on this site are boxed originals, and our cars and track are not split up from boxed sets. Our service is focused towards the average home racer, either "rug-racers" or people building their own permanent circuit for family and friends. You may even go as far as setting up a small digital racing club. Also if you are a wife, girlfriend, parent or other relative or friend of a "Scalextric petrolhead" needing help with a gift purchase, we are more than happy to put forward some ideas and give you some jargon-free advice.

We've designed this site to be as helpful as possible, even to the extent of referring you on to other sites and even other retailers who specialise in items you need but we don't keep. Hopefully you will find it easily navigable, properly spelt, and not full of overblown marketing and histrionics. An oasis of calm in the mad slot car world. The primary purpose is to make sure you have access to all the information you need to make the right decision about the sort of digital layout you need for your own circumstances. So if you bookmark this site you should find it a useful first port of call for future reference.

In fact this web site has become a leading source of information on Scalextric, and because we write all our own product descriptions, other retailers blindly copy whole chunks of our own personally-written text on to their sites. Plagiarism like this is being monitored by a web service and we are taking steps to have copied material removed, to protect our customers from those whose trade is based on unauthorised copying of our material but who may not actually have the product knowledge to back it up.

Stock levels and the production process
If you are new to buying Scalextric-type equipment, you might be a bit confused about the way cars are produced and stock levels and availability keep changing from month to month as new cars come along and older models are dropped. Many people expect everything to be always available - here's a quick explanation of why that's not possible.

Each year, it is decided which cars will be modelled, usually many months ahead of production. So when a phenomenon like Lewis Hamilton comes along it is often hard to quickly change the plans. Producing a model often involves a lot of licensing work with the manufacturers (Ferrari for example are particularly pernickety), drivers (if the helmet is being modelled) and advertisers on the real car, which can slow things down. This is why you rarely get a model of a current season's F1 car, for example, till the season is nearly over.

Also any alcohol and tobacco advertising has to be removed on the Scalextric version. Quantities are manufactured based partly on feedback from customers (that's you), communicated via suppliers (that's us) - the better the pre-order interest, the more cars are likely to be made. Otherwise once the run is finished, attention moves to the new cars for next year.

The cars are made in batches - some cars only get one production run, such as the limited edition cars, while batches of perennial favourites like track pieces will get sent out periodically through the year. We make an educated guess about which items will be good sellers but you can help us with that (see below). When we run out of a particular car, that's probably it, unless there is another batch in production. Sometimes we can obtain expected delivery dates for cars still in production, you will find these under the "availability" links by each item.

Think of it as a bit like a Generation Game conveyor belt. You can have what is going past the window right now, some items (like the "cuddly toy") keep appearing at regular intervals, whilst others are on there once only and once they're gone, they're gone.

However this site is perhaps a rarity in the world of internet shopping. Here, you, the customer, have a big say in what we stock. There are so many cars and other products we *could* stock, we need you to let us know if there is something specifically you want that we aren't currently offering. If we can obtain it, we will. And we will get some extras in, in case some other people want it too.

Our philosophy
Our primary aims are to help people get started with Scalextric Sport Digital and provide a knowledgeable and experienced service that helps slot car racers get the most out of their SSD systems. At the moment we do not have much experience of other brands, and do not regularly stock anything other than Scalextric, so we cannot offer the same level of service for companies such as Ninco or SCX Digital. Even so, we will always do our best to help and if there's a question we can't answer, we usually know a man who can.

We do not expect that you will find us to be the most comprehensively-stocked Scalextric supplier, but prefer to specialise in SSD and Micro Scalextric, and a bit of analogue, and related products like track and accessories. Neither do we aim to compete with cut-price retailers but prefer to concentrate on providing a more informed customer service.

Buyer beware: please note that some of the large general toy or household retailers and have little or no detailed knowledge of the Scalextric products they are selling and we have heard many, many stories about clueless superstore sales assistants giving out the wrong information. And worse, sometimes we go to order items from the factory and find that one of these national retailers has bought up all the stock. It's very frustrating all round.

There is another sort of retailer too, the ones that take a dim view of those who just want some straightforward beginner's advice or are looking for some ordinary, inexpensive cars to race. Sometimes they will misrepresent or repackage Scalextric products as something they are not. Either they are Ebay sellers, or are attached to big club tracks where they actually race home-built cars with specialist parts and motors, so are sometimes not the best people to speak to about simple tuning and maintenance of ordinary retail cars. They will tell you that you need to buy a different brand, or uprate the motors, gears, add weights, take the magnet out, and a whole lot of other stuff. You don't *need* to do any of that and a lot of people find that sort of thing very off-putting. Scalextric cars are Ready to Race (RTR) out of the box.

In our view, too much of either of these kinds of thing is not good for the future of the hobby.

We on the other hand are a small, family business based in an English village. Our prices are sometimes higher because we have to buy in smaller quantities, and we also put many new products through their paces on our own tracks (which also has a cost) so that we can offer our customers a more informed opinion of the latest cars, track and accessories.

We are also very careful not to over-stock. We know of a few other slot car shops that have gone under very recently because they got in loads of specialist and exotic cars that nobody wanted to buy. So if you can, please be patient - the general plan is to get stock in to cover the perennial sellers and anything else that has a good sales record. We are not in the business of running a slot car museum! But if there's something specific you want us to get in, please let us know.

As hands-on users and club racers of the Scalextric system, we can also offer you a more knowledgeable, personal service. Whether you are a "rug racer" or are setting up a circuit in your loft or garage, we like to help people enjoy their racing experience. We also like to do our bit to save the planet and recycle Scalextric items, so anything from whole cars to good condition parts from otherwise broken cars, and other good-condition accesories can be found here - and if you have some old Scalextric items you would like to get rid of, you know where to bring them. We also recycle packaging received from the manufacturers wherever possible.

So by buying from us you will be making a more informed purchase, and supporting the independent retailer, thus in a small way helping to ensure that slot car racing continues to flourish, and does not end up as just a set of miscellaneous stock lines at the bottom of Chain Store plc's balance sheet.

NSCC Hornby weekend
As a member of the NSCC, Martin, the store owner, attended the annual weekend event in 2007 and 2008 where enthusiasts get to meet the manufacturers and also put their products through their paces. Such events are great fun, and enable you to meet other club members and find out more about latest product releases. These weekends are only open to NSCC members so if you would like to get involved with a future event, hop over to the NSCC web site and sign up!