Scalextric has given slotters a worthy foe for the Porsche's currently
circulating the world's tracks. The Ferrari 430 is the
current GT car campaigned by Ferrari teams to counter the Porsche 911
(997) RSR.
The full scale Ferrari's are getting the better of the Porsche's
because of the under powered engine currently used by Porsche. The
racing year started out with great promise with the Sebring
American LeMans Series race coming down to the last few turns. The
430 driven by Jamie Melo and the RSR piloted
by Jorg Bergmeister of the Flying Lizard Motorsports team were
side-by-side until some aggresive driving by Melo gave the Ferrari the
win.
The Scalextric car's finish is excellent, although my copy did come
with a blemish on the hood. Next to the right side headlight (or on the
left side as you look at it in the photo here) you can see a mark where
something has hit the inside of the body and made a reverse dent in the
hood. The blemish was caused by one long body screw that was threaded
into the underside of the hood. The end of the screw is nearly flush
with the surface of the hood...and odd bit of damage, which I would
expect to be isolate
Engine detail is well done, most of the parts appear to be painted on
rather than separate parts.
The mirrors AND the wing are made of similar flexy black parts. I
unaware that Scalextric was going to use this type of part on their
primary line of slot cars. The high impact line has these
break-resistant parts. It's probably a good idea that the flexible
parts be used on their"detailed" models too, since Scalex
doesn't really produce the mold quality you'd like to see in a hard
plastic parts. In this case the black parts are correct, my only
concern is that the flexy part's paint might flake easily or wear
poorly.
Flip the car over and you can see the solid chassis and digital plug
trap door along with a nice new guide design. I wasn't a huge fan of
the old blue guides and this new screw in guide is a huge design
improvement. I don't know if there's much of a change in performance
because of the guide change, but the screw adds a bit of piece of mind
to slotters due to its more secure connection to the chassis.
If you take off the body you can see the small photo etched grilles are
attached to the chassis rather than the body. I think this is a super
idea, since the older Scalex cars (like the GT40's) often shed these
parts quickly when you started racing the cars. With the grilles tucked
inside attached to the chassis they may last a bit longer.
Inside the body you can see there is a rather large half-pan interior.
I'm glad Scalextric has decided to use a half pan rather than a more
bulky, and heavier full interior. I'm not a huge fan of a full interior
and I think that a very well done half interior is quite enough detail
(and weight) thanks.
On the track the 93 gram car feels quick and the initial lap times
around 2.7 seconds back this up. It's fast but that's not the fastest
lap time on my track, which is somewhere around 2.4 seconds. The wheels
do wobble a bit and it appears the tires aren't flat on the wheels.
After a bit of inspection, and some tugging to get the tires to seat a
bit better, I saw the tires were riding on the outside edges only.
I did a fair amount of tire trueing to get them flat.
After trueing the tires the lap times droped to
around 2.5 seconds. The car feelt a bit faster and certainly much
smoother even with the strong magnet holding it in place on my Carrera
test track.
The yellow front lights (which are quite bright)
throw so much light that the light leaks into the interior and casts an
odd greenish glow inside the car which you can see when the car is
driving around. The effect is sort of odd but doesn't really take away
from the enjoyment of driving the car. The photo above was taken of the
car with the lights dimmed and the car at full throttle. You can see
the odd greenish-blue glow inside and the light leak extending
to the track below and sides of the car. Many lighted cars
have light leaks like this, but this one with its blue cast on the
track and glow inside may seems more pronounced because of the light
inside the cabin of the car.
The issues with the lights aside, this car is a
blast to drive and is definatly a fast car. You really can't go wrong
with Scalextric cars. They perform wonderfully right out of the box and
with only a drop of oil here and there you can go racing quickly. I
place a high value on a slot car that needs nearly no tuning to enjoy,
this car is certainly near the top of that list. A recommended buy.
Thanks to Fantasy World Hobbies for the car to review.
Dave Kennedy
Publisher,
Slot Car News
|
|
