RIP Garry Johnson
Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2025 8:34 pm
It is with great sadness, that I am reporting the Passing of Garry Johnson, being arguably one of the serious mainstays of slotting in Australia.
Garry, was an extremely capable Slot Car racer, builder and designer, in many of the classes he raced in, from Wing cars to Scale racing.
He was the first person to introduce a Carbon fibre chassis to Open class Wing car racing, as well as a truly superb Scale chassis and many Carbon Parts for Plafit and scale cars and recently, produced a Carbon 'Flexi' style chassis along with some excellently produced Lexan bodies, recently released under the 'Slotworx' brand name, along with continuing and advancing the production of the 'Porsche Cup' Scale chassis initially created by Cameron Neilson.
Over the years Garry built quite a few Excellent tracks, with a few of them Still in use, and arguably THE Best and Fastest 'King' tracks in Australia, strangely perhaps one of which has only recently been relocated and raced on only this last Sunday, he also ran a quite successful Raceway at Penrith where Reggie Coram set a New Open class track record.
Garry also produced a very good Track Hire and Race control system, which ran on the Commodore Amiga who's inherent features allowed it to be extremely effective and accurate.
In later years when the Amigas were getting old and somewhat 'Unobtanium', he produced a New system that used Windows based machines as the control 'interface' for the bespoke remote track units.
Personally, whilst I was aware of Garry earlier on in my slot racing life, it was realistically when my long time slotting friend Mark Fox and I returned to racing, that I became good friends with Garry and his family. Spending quite a lot of time together, and offering help and input to the early Race controller software and later helping him build a few of the tracks, in between my other work.
After his move to Queensland, I didn't see that much of him but regularly chatted on the phone and perhaps obviously, became involved in the ASCRA forum, eventually taking on the hosting and running of.
I regarded Garry, as More than just merely another Slot Racing acquaintance .... but, ... as a Good Friend and I am saddened by his passing and will miss him, as will, I am sure, Many others.
Rest in Peace my friend
My sincere condolences to Josh, Juanita and the more recent extended family.
- 11-IMG_9361.JPG (75.58 KiB) Viewed 259 times
Garry, was an extremely capable Slot Car racer, builder and designer, in many of the classes he raced in, from Wing cars to Scale racing.
He was the first person to introduce a Carbon fibre chassis to Open class Wing car racing, as well as a truly superb Scale chassis and many Carbon Parts for Plafit and scale cars and recently, produced a Carbon 'Flexi' style chassis along with some excellently produced Lexan bodies, recently released under the 'Slotworx' brand name, along with continuing and advancing the production of the 'Porsche Cup' Scale chassis initially created by Cameron Neilson.
Over the years Garry built quite a few Excellent tracks, with a few of them Still in use, and arguably THE Best and Fastest 'King' tracks in Australia, strangely perhaps one of which has only recently been relocated and raced on only this last Sunday, he also ran a quite successful Raceway at Penrith where Reggie Coram set a New Open class track record.
Garry also produced a very good Track Hire and Race control system, which ran on the Commodore Amiga who's inherent features allowed it to be extremely effective and accurate.
In later years when the Amigas were getting old and somewhat 'Unobtanium', he produced a New system that used Windows based machines as the control 'interface' for the bespoke remote track units.
Personally, whilst I was aware of Garry earlier on in my slot racing life, it was realistically when my long time slotting friend Mark Fox and I returned to racing, that I became good friends with Garry and his family. Spending quite a lot of time together, and offering help and input to the early Race controller software and later helping him build a few of the tracks, in between my other work.
After his move to Queensland, I didn't see that much of him but regularly chatted on the phone and perhaps obviously, became involved in the ASCRA forum, eventually taking on the hosting and running of.
I regarded Garry, as More than just merely another Slot Racing acquaintance .... but, ... as a Good Friend and I am saddened by his passing and will miss him, as will, I am sure, Many others.
Rest in Peace my friend
My sincere condolences to Josh, Juanita and the more recent extended family.
- 48-IMG_9399.JPG (66.93 KiB) Viewed 259 times
- 61-IMG_9413.JPG (94.33 KiB) Viewed 259 times