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History

In 1963, Aurora introduced the now-legendary Thunderjet 500 motor, an innovative design by British-American engineer Derek Brand. The Thunderjet was intended as a high-performance, high-reliability replacement for Aurora's successful but finicky vibrator motor. Its two-inch (50 mm) unitized chassis, containing a wide, flat motor-armature, was strikingly different from the conventional inline motors of its HO competitors. It was nicknamed the pancake motor because of the armature's shape.

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Configuration

The Thunderjet could outperform contemporary inlines primarily because the vertical-shaft layout allowed the bulky motor magnets to be mounted to the front and rear, which left the full width of the chassis for the armature and windings. Inline motors require side-mounted magnets, limiting the size of both armature and magnets. The extra torque of the pancake motor's oversized armature more than made up for the friction losses in its complex power train.

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Sales Performance

The Aurora Thunderjet was probably the best-selling slot car in history. Faller (Germany) produced it for sale in Europe, and competing companies could not match the speed and reliability of Brand's pancake design. The Thunderjets and their improved versions, the AFX, sold in the tens of millions, completely dominating the HO market for almost a decade, By the early-1970s Tyco's inline motors had become sophisticated enough to challenge Aurora's pancake cars for the HO market. In 1975, Aurora dropped the pancake design for a high-performance inline model, the G-Plus.

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Primary Scale

Perhaps because armature space was never at a premium in the larger bodies, the pancake-style motor has seldom been seen in 1:32 or 1:24 scale cars, though Aurora did use the design in its short-lived line of 1:48 scale slot cars. Although the armatures found on 1:43 "O" Gauge cars are identical to the ones found in the 1:64 HO scale chassis'.

The pancake motor today is found primarily in the reproductions of the 1960s and 1970s Aurora HO cars marketed in the late 1990s by Playing Mantis Johnny Lightning brand and in the late 2000s by the revived Autoworld brand.

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Related Video

• 1966 Aurora Thunderjet Commercial