Cox is returning to its roots - In years past, many modelers started in the hobby with the famous PT-19 control line trainer, the graceful Sportavia or the wild Shrike prop powered car and nearly every flyer has flown a model with a Cox engine at some point in their history. And the demand for Cox hobby products is still there, search on eBay and you will find a large selection of vintage Cox models - often a rare model in good condition will sell for hundreds of dollars.
Just in time for our 60th anniversary, Cox Hobbies is once again a hobby company producing high quality radio controlled products for modelers from the new beginner to the advanced flier. Cox was always a pioneer in the industry and will be so once again. The new Cox will have the best of our long history but also the latest cutting edge technologies and designs. Cox has assembled a great team of hobby industry professionals with interests ranging from the smallest micro indoor planes to giant scale air racing. Our goal is to produce a new generation of Cox classics for today's modelers. We think you will like what we come up with.
In 1945, Roy Cox started The L. M. Cox Manufacturing Co, Inc. As a boy, a young Roy Cox spent many hours after school and during the weekends in his father's bicycle shop in Placentia, California. It was with that exposure he developed a keen interest in mechanical devices that inspired his entire career. Surprisingly, Cox Manufacturing did not start out making the famous Cox line of model engines, but rather Roy began producing wooden pop guns in his garage. It was the start of a company that grew to a multi-million dollar empire, known throughout the world. His small wooden popgun manufacturing business was a success; it was not until after the war in 1947 that metal was readily available again that Mr. Cox was able to look into new products. One of the first was a metal die-cast push car. It later developed into a tethered "whip" car, which could be pulled around a circle at an impressive speed. Roy noted that modelers were building and racing larger scale cars with larger .60 sized engines that could attain speeds up to 100 MPH. The average price for such a car was over $100. (Quite a sum in that era.) Inspired by the interest in the gas-powered cars, Cox developed a cast aluminum midget racer utilizing a .15-sized engine made by Cameron Brothers.
By this time Cox was outgrowing its small facility and in 1963 the company constructed a larger manufacturing facility at 1505 E. Warner in Santa Ana, Ca. Starting at 80,000 sq. ft. and with three expansions in just a few years, grew to 225,000 sq. ft. This provided room for growth; Slot cars, model rockets, HO trains, and even a 1 HP Chain saw became part of the famous Cox product line. 1n 1969 Roy Cox decided to retire and sold the company to Leisure Dynamics. Such items as kites, walkie-talkies and yo-yos were added to the line by Leisure Dynamics. In 1976, Cox Hobbies acquired Airtronics Inc. to expand the Cox hobby products. to multi-channel radio systems and balsa planes. The Conquest engines were also developed, manufactured and added to the hobby product line. By 1983, the entire Leisure Dynamics conglomerate was in the bankruptcy courts. William Selzer, the designer of the Babe Bee, joined with a local businessman and purchased Cox from the Leisure group. The Cox Company became Cox Hobbies, Incorporated, a subsidiary of Aeromil Engineering Company in 1984. The company prospered, the future looked bright, and again Cox was cramped, operating in several leased buildings in the neighborhood. In 1990, a decision was made to move to a large manufacturing facility in Corona, California. In 1995, Cox celebrated their 50th Anniversary. That year Cox offered a gold plated Pitts Special with a numbered certificate of authenticity. There were only 2,632 planes produced. New in the anniversary year of 1995, was the AT-6 Texan, the .049 Texaco and Texaco Jr. engines, the Killer Bee .049 engine, the Lazy Bee R/C plane, the ready-built balsa Katydid and Scorpion plane kits and the AD-6 Skyraider reissued from 1969. In January 1996, Estes Industries, the world's leading manufacturer of model rocketry products, purchased Cox and later in that year the Cox company was moved to the Estes facility in Penrose Colorado. For the next few years, many of the new Cox releases were designed for themass market and were sold very successfully through chain stores. But, something wasn't quite right - the hobby business is where Cox belonged and that's where it is returning.
So there you have it -we've come full circle back to hobbies right where it all started with a quite few steps along the way. We thank all of our many past and present customers and invite you along with all those just discovering Cox for the first time to join us on this journey begun all those years ago back in Roy's garage. Here at Cox, the future looks very bright indeed.