Spindizzies

A New York box salesman, a Chicago doctor, a United Air Lines pilot, a Texas polo player, 46 other assorted U. S. citizens gathered in Los Angeles last week to ply their common sport. They were all "spindizzies." Three years ago spindizzy was unknown to the U. S. vernacular. Then Los Angeles' Dooling brothers (Tom, Russ and Hank), who were model-airplane buffs, began to experiment with model autos. They built a miniature automobile, not much larger than a milk bottle, to fit over one of their tiny, 1/4-h.p. internal-combustion airplane engines, tied one end of a piece of wire to the car's inner weight centre, tied the other end to a pole, let the car run in a wide circle.

Soon every mechanically-minded Californian had heard of the terrific speed of the Doolings' doodlebugs. A Fresno real-estate man, Richard Hulse, was so fasciriated that he organized a miniature-auto racing club in his home town, got Manhattan Publisher Charles Penn to give the little buzz-buggies a plug in his national magazine, Model Craftsman. Within 60 days, 40 clubs sprang up.

Today there are some 300 miniature-auto racing clubs in the U. S., some 9,000 enthusiasts (90% adult) who proudly call themselves spindizzies. The pioneering Doolings, who have turned their hobby into a livelihood, now tool out 600 little Doolings a month, have 20-odd competitors.

A spindizzy can buy a ready-made car like the Hiller Comet, cheapest on the market, for $28 (engine & all). Or he may pay up to $175 for a custom-made job. But his little racer, under the rules of the newly organized American Miniature Racing Car Association, cannot be more than 24 inches long. The average miniature is 16 inches long, weighs seven pounds, is made of aluminum castings painted according to its owner's whim. Its tiny, two-cycle motor, wide open, can turn over up to 25,000 revolutions a minute. For fuel, some owners have their own secret formula. But the most commonly used "soups" are over-the-counter concoctions of castor oil, menthenol, alcohol, ether, nitrobenzol and other rapid-burning combustibles. Price per gallon: 75-c- up. The average miniature car runs a mile on two ounces.

Whizzing around a pole (cable racing) is still the most popular form of miniature-auto racing, mainly because it can be managed on any gymnasium, floor or hard tennis court. But the spindizzies who gathered last week in Los Angeles' $3,500 Miniature Speedway were newfangled rail-racing enthusiasts, competing in the first miniature rail-racing championship of the U. S. In rail-racing, far more exciting to watch, cars usually race in threes (against time) around a banked wooden oval, one-sixteenth of a mile in circumference. They cling to the oval's steel rails by means of ball-bearing rollers (attached to the front and rear axles), which fit under the rails' flanges.

With as much awe as if they were at the Indianapolis race track, 2,500 spectators watched last week's championship race. Round & round the little "hot-irons" whirred--motors whining, sputtering, filling the air with the peculiar odor of burning castor oil, dear to the nose of every auto-racing fan. No one has yet been killed on a Tom Thumb speedway, but accidents are not infrequent. Excited spindizzies have been known to get their arms or legs fractured by a whizzing car; tires have blown off into judges' faces; many cars have blown up.

In last week's big race, Roy Richter's Richter Streamliner blew two tires. But when the last heat had been chalked up, Richter's racer had won the championship --at a speed of 67,085 m.p.h.*

"Within a year, miniatures will do better than 100 m.p.h.," predicted the three Dooling brothers.

* In smcwth-floor cable racing, with no rails to cause friction, cars run even faster. Record: 77 m.p.h.

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