Revell Galaxie update

Revell is now saying that the Galaxie will be available at the end of February!

Thanks to Kim from REH for the news!

A night in NYC racing slot cars ...and team SCX gets their butt kicked!

Last night I got to go back to my roots and race with the guys at the Slot Car Racing Club of New York in the lovely climes of Mid-town Manhattan. And despite a driving rain, Frank Nichols, and Chuck Ehredt (SCX North American Business Manager) and Bryan Young (SCX USA Tech Manager) came along to see how the guys do it in the big city. We had a number of cars on hand but from those the Corvette, Audi, MRRC GT1, and Peugeot 908 were chosen for some semi-formal racing.
The guys got down to business on the routed wood track made by Gustavo all those years ago. Below from left, Frank, Craig, Bob, Chuck and Carlo. Turn some laps on the track.
Chuck and Bob take a break from racing to tape off the tires to try and get them a bit cleaner... a dusty room to be sure.
In between heat races Bryan, ever the man in motion, takes time to respond to customer emails from his Blackberry while Gustavo and Carlo look over the race results from the last race.
And of course, when a camera comes out...so does the kid in all of us, right Gustavo and Bryan?
And as the night went on Byran, Carlo and Chuck and the rest of us had quite a good time.
Below Carlo basks in the glow of having soundly defeated the field in a heat race. The teams were made up of the NY guys (Gustavo, Carlo, Craig and Bob) and the SCX team (Chuck, Bryan, Frank, and myself)... and boy did we take it on the chin. Overall the hometown boys soundly defeated us on their own turf!
And yes...Bob "Wild Child" Pomann won a few races too...wait who's that in the background?
We had a cool time in NY with the guys and hopefully these races are a more frequent happening for the SCRCNY guys. It's tough to get everyone together but it's a good group of guys!

Thanks to Gustavo, Bob, Craig, and Carlo. For having us as guests!
DaveK
Publisher, Slot Car News

Carrera's NY toyshow

Things were jumping at the Carrera booth in New York. They had lots of new products on display. Two that jumped out to me were the concept Camaro (here in a fire red).
And the Carrera GO!!! SpeedRacer pair of cars...these should be quite successful for them!

SCX's NY Toyfair highlights

Well Bryan Young, left, and Chuck Ehredt, second from right, were quite busy today at the Distributoys/SCX booth today. On display were a Compact set (which will be sold to hobby stores soon) and a digital set. Much of what was shown had been seen in Germany.

But what wasn't talked about much was the analog pit box. This will be available in a set in the middle of the year and will be sold as a separate item in the end of December'08/January'09. It will allow you to program the size of the gas tank and it will accurately display the level of the fuel and you can watch drain out as you race. You push the button on the base, stop in the yellow checkered area, and refuel... and if you run out of fuel, you're done! How about that for digital features for you ANALOG set?

And I managed to get the 2008 catalog.


I believe this is the livery of Porsche that will be released as the Pro car later this year.

Another report late Monday.
DaveK

Avant Slot - Additional production run!

An email arrived Saturday afternoon from Kimrey Enterprises. There will be more Peugeot's and Audi's produced! So it appears the voices of the slot-consumers have been heard! Now...I suggest you call the Avant Slot dealer of your choice and pre-order them!

Dave Kennedy

The email from Cal to his dealers:
-----------------------
Dear Customers,
Due to high demand and low inventory, Avant has decided to re-run four additional cars for Kimrey Enterprises. These cars are listed below. If you miss out on the recent pre-order here is your last chance. Please do not hesitate, just like the other cars these will sale out. I have a lot of customers are calling me directly wanting to know who is carrying the Avant cars. Avant is re-running a small run so I need all pre-orders by Monday and first come first served. I will respond to each Retail store so you will know what you have coming so you can pre-sale these cars. Avant said that these cars will be available for shipment to the US with in three weeks, if you have any questions please email me.

Thank you,
Cal
Kimrey Enterprises, Inc.

50110 2007 Audi R10 Le Mans
50111 2007 Audi R10 Le Mans
50112 2007 Audi R10 Le Mans
50303 2007 Peugeot 908 Le Mans

NY Toyfair coverage

Frank and I will be attending the New York Toyfair this weekend. Expect reports from Carrera (by Frank Nichols) and SCX from me and more information as it is available.

DaveK

Nationwide slot car commercial - Bob "Wild Child" Pomann on the scene!

A while ago I introduced Bob Pomann here on Slot Car News. Bob's an interesting guy, by day he's a world class sound engineer in NYCity, but in his off hours Bob seems to have this way of making the scene as a "slot car consultant" on a number of commercials. Bob's most notable commercial to this point was the Mazda "Adventures of Wild Child" commercial. Read the full story at this link.

A year ago this weekend I met Bob at the New York Toyfair. I've gotten to know Bob over the year and his excitement for slot cars (especially digital systems) is unmatched. So when he called me recently and proceeded to tell me that he was involved yet again with a slot commercial I sure wasn't surprised. This time the rumor had been going around for some time here in the states that there was a big commercial being shot for Nascar. Well, close. The commercial was shot for the Nationwide Series (formerly the Busch Series). The rumor had it that it was a commercial that featured a field of Carrera C.O.T.'s...well not exactly. Since the commercial is not for Nascar's Winston...er...Nextel...I mean...Sprint Cup, the field must be made of the aero body and not the C.O.T., and that's exactly what Bob confirmed.

The 5-day commercial shoot was done in various sets in NYCity. The commercial featured 40 cars, mostly Scalextric and SCX, with a few Carrera COT's in the back of the field as fillers.
That's Bob in the foreground I think looking official.
Bob's huge selection of "little people" was rented to the production company for the shoot.

Here you can see the main straight with the grandstand in the background. A section of the track was routed and the rest was Scalextric sectional track.






The 40-car-field was pulled along for one of the shots using fishing line hooked from car to car so they'd all move at once.
The track was fully functional. To get the accidents seen in the commercial (and I still have yet to see any of the 5 spots that were shot), an airgun was used to blow the car off the track to make a realistic looking impact. This was a trick used on the Wild Child commercial to blow the doors off the Porsche diecast seen at one point in the commercial.

It seems that every year a few more commercials are made using slot cars as a featured part of the commercial or as a bit player...maybe one of these days we'll see an actual slot car commercial on TV here in the US... stranger things have happened!

Thanks to Bob Pomann for use of his photos and for the interview!

Dave Kennedy
Publisher, Slot Car News

Carrera's German Toyfair releases

Zippo has sent along more photos from the Toyfair.

New Porsche RSR - the real one

The 2008 Porsche RSR has been shown finally (actually a few days ago) but I thought I'd repost my photos (which are of the Flying Lizard Motorsports car from last year's Lime Rock race). The diveplanes under the headlights are the most noticeable difference. These were evidently first done by the Tafel team (who have now fled for the loving embrace of Ferrari and their fleet of portly looking 430's.

New Carrera GO!!! digital sets

Thanks to Zippo from Schlitzrenner.de for the photos of the new sets from the German Toyfair.

SCX Peugeot 908HDi - review

The real Peugeot 908HDi is a car that's captured the imagination of a lot of race fans because of the Group C-ness of the car. Quite a few slotters have talked about how cool the car looks largely because of the roof on the LMP1 class car. And during recent American LeMans Series testing the Peugeot was fast, really fast. This will only help the Peugeot become maybe the next "gotta have" slot car.




The flat black and white paint deco is striking. The three antenna's on top of the add a nice bit of detail. They aren't a flexible plastic type of antenna so it's good that this car is quite stable and isn't likely to end up on its room much.

The RX42B is a solid performer and the motor is held in place with the normal tilting motor pod. The motor has more than adequate power for homeset use and most racers will find if fast especially if this Peugeot is raced against its SCX sister car the Audi R10.


This Peugeot is ready for digital action as well. The car comes with stub axles up front to allow putting a digital "chip" between the wheels.

The back axle is held in place with some nice spherical brass bearings. And something that we kind of take for granted in SCX's motor pod design is that the motors stay in place under heavy acceleration, there's no hop here! This is a part of SCX cars that might be overlooked. But with all the high-torque-motored cars (or low torque motored cars for that matter) that have less than solid chassis so it's worth repeating...the motors are perfectly held in place and solid!

Out of the box the rear wheels did stick out a bit, but with a gentle push on each end of the wheels snapped in place, and are now fully under the car.

On the 62-foot East New York wood track we like to race LMP cars on really let this car stretch out to the limit of it's performance. So prior to testing the car I did only some minor lubrication on the axle bearings and motor. The stock SCX tires don't do very well on wood so I swapped them out for some NSR Ultra Grips. After a bit of truing the car really worked well on the track. It's a really, really easy car to drive and lots of fun. The motor is the RX-42B which is solid performer powers this car to a fastest lap time of about 5.5 seconds. Generally "fast" begins somewhere around 5.1 seconds on this track. So with a car with NO modifications done to it, which uses a 20k motor, on a surface for which it wasn't designed...it's quite a good performer. And on a shorter track with shorter straights (which would be the majority of tracks out there) this car would hold its own nicely I think.

On my SCX test track the car performed quite well. I have fencing but no aprons around most of the track and the long tail on this car and very little slide out room isn't a great mix. The car length of this car means it has the tendency to rub the fencing if you're a bit too heavy on the throttle in the corners, and well, I'm famously not a great driver. With the magnet in the stock position the car feels stuck down and it's really easy to get the car cookin' around the track.

If you're a new slotter or if you're looking for a LMP type slot car for a younger driver this might be an excellent choice. It's far more drivable than you might believe. Give the car a look at your favorite local hobby shop.

Dave Kennedy
Publisher, Slot Car News


And for a second opinion on this car please read a review by Harry Wise of Home Racing World at this link.