Monty Ohren - A personal slot racing history
Monty's first experience with slot cars was in 1964, following a magazine article in "Popular Mechanics" Always an avid reader, he made it a point to thoroughly read Carmodel, Model Car Racing and all similar publications, committing race reports and technical data to memory.
Monty first built a scratchbuilt car in 1965, and was soon doing the same for friends. During 1968 he started showing up and observing "Pro" meets, and started competing in SoCal USRA events beginning in 1969. His racing developed and 1970 saw him competing in the "Semi-Pro" class, a year later winning the Mura Southwest Regional Semi-Pro Championship in 1971 (Beating out Dan DeBella these days of Proslot fame)
Another milestone was in September 1971 when Monty built the car driven by Earl Campbell that did the first ever sub 4 second lap on a King track. In 1973 Monty decided to join the slotcar industry fulltime, and purchased a ½ share in a raceway with "Big Jim" Greenemeyer (who is these days known as a 1/10th scale R/C motor guru, in a perverse case of parallel personal evolution), and in 1974 he bought out Jims share in the raceway, which he then ran through to 1980, culminating with hosting the World Championship of 1980. Monty raced in this event and made the Pro Main.
After that, Monty then retired to a "normal" life, but decided to return to slot car racing in 1989, winning his first SoCal race in his first start back in January 1989. He raced for a number of years taking the SoCal Group 7 championship in 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1996, winning the Western States Group 7 Championship race in 1996, after taking 2nd in 1991 and 3rd in 1995. At this time a new form of racing started, 1/24th Eurosport, and Monty joined the racing at the ground level, winning the SoCal series in 1995, 1996 and 1997, along with the 1/32nd Eurosport series in 1995 and 1996.
In 1998 Monty founded Best 'O' The West (BOW), building high quality slot racing motors and products, and even some tracks. He continues to grow and run the company to this day, being the winning builder and/or balancer for 16 of the last 20 ceramic class races at USRA Div 2 Nats. Monty has also had much success here in the US in regional series, and around the world in such countries as France, Belgium, The Phillipines, Canada and Sweden.