California Speed Racers : Slot cars are making a comeback. The models are lighter, faster, fancier, more powerful and a whole lot more expensive than their ancestors. Admits one fan: ‘You start doing it and you just don’t want to stop.’

The sound is amazing--like a platoon of electric razors shifted into overdrive, or maybe a swarm of bees trapped in a jar.

It’s the whine of tiny motors being pushed well beyond what nature ever intended.

If you were around in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s when slot-car racing had its first go-round, the buzz has a nostalgic sound.

The high-speed, model-car hobby is essentially the same. Tracks snake like huge plywood-and-plastic pretzels across large expanses of floor. Typically, there are three courses with different degrees of difficulty and a quarter-scale drag strip at each racing complex.

Today’s cars are lighter, faster, fancier, more powerful, and, naturally enough, a whole lot more expensive than their ancestors.

The intent, however, is the same: Make your little electric racer zip around the track faster than a mouse speeding for shelter.

Motors give you power and tires give you traction, but you win races with your trigger finger.

Developing good eye-hand coordination lets you navigate around the track’s curves without slipping from the slot and sending your car skittering across a dozen lanes of oncoming traffic.

The cars get up to about 85 miles per hour, the equivalent of a real car traveling at more than 2,000 m.p.h.

“You just get hooked. I mean, I’m here just about every day,” Joe McClure said without removing his eyes from the 3-ounce racer gulping volts as it gives the track a high-speed hug at Slot Car Challenge in Concord.

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“You start doing it,” he added, “and you just don’t want to stop.”

McClure, who works as a drywall installer, isn’t the sort of fellow you’d have found at the track 20 or 30 years ago.

Back then, he said, it was the sport of kids.

Although McClure played with the cars as a kid, he got hooked as an adult.

“Actually, when we opened, most of our first customers were adults,” said Bryan Pankhurst of Hot Slots, a racing facility in Pleasant Hill.

“They’d done it back in the ‘60s and wanted to try it again. But now the younger kids are getting into it.”

Many of the racers from the ‘60s and ‘70s are now fathers, and a good number are introducing their kids to the sport.

“I think it’s a good sport for families,” said Charles Jones of Slot Car Challenge.

“The fathers can come in here with their sons,” he explained. “And the mothers can bring their kids in here and leave them, knowing they’ll be in a safe, clean environment.”

The slot-car racing industry is taking great pains to promote a healthy, competitive image.

When it disappeared the first time, it basically self-destructed, according to Jones.

Manufacturers of equipment began selling cars and gear through discount outlets. These places could sell for much lower prices than the tracks could, so the tracks weren’t able to make enough money to stay open.

When they folded, nobody wanted to buy slot-car racers, so many manufacturers went belly-up too.

In addition, technical advances came quickly, and car owners were frustrated when racers with big wallets could basically buy themselves wins.

Now, the industry has a series of regulations and classifications for cars that, in a nutshell, says there are classes for $40 race cars and other classes for the high-tech speedsters that come close to breaking the $400 barrier.

To keep the kids interested (or perhaps keep adult egos at bay), there are separate classes for youngsters.

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Local tracks are busy every weeknight, with drivers competing for gift certificates and other prizes.

“I guess when I started, I was in here three or four days straight, for at least an hour at a time, learning how to drive,” McClure said.

“It’s really frustrating at first, because you slide off the track so much.”

Jones said most people need a few sessions to pick up the feel necessary to speed around the banked curves.

However, the skills then develop quickly, and newcomers find themselves entering races after a few practice sessions.

While it’s possible to rent cars for racing, McClure said it’s probably a better idea to have your own car and controller.

That way, you get used to the feel and are ultimately more successful.

You can buy completed cars or car kits, but most people go with a pre-built one the first time.

“That doesn’t last long though,” said Jones. “Before long they’re changing them and trying to get more out of them.”