In the late 1950’s, an English inventor named Derek Brand first developed a small motorized car to be used with model railroads. This was the beginnings of HO slot car racing. These early cars were designed for use with the popular English model railroading of 1:76 scale. It was slightly larger than the American HO gauge of 1:87 scale.

These early model cars were run on a 2-lane track system. The first one was marketed in England by Playcraft under the brand Electric Highways Model Motoring. In this early track system, straight tracks had a dashed white “passing” line painted on the center of each section while curved track sections had a solid “no passing” stripe along the centers to better reproduced real highways.