Scalextric C3509 – Lotus Evora GT4

The car:

This is the third high detail Lotus Evora to be released by Scalextic and is another stunning version of the cars you would see racing around many of the UK circuits in 2013.

Looks:

As I have written before, I love a nice Lotus and the Evora is one of the best looking cars they have produced, just behind the Exige. This model is based on the No. 117 driven by Thierry Verhiest at Brands Hatch on the 24^th August 2013 who managed to come 8^th with his partner car coming 7^th in no.99. Judging by the photographs I have managed to obtain it was a rather wet day which actually shows two separate lights which must be mounted at the front grill. The lights are not located here in the model, however I think that can be forgiven as I’m sure there are many cars with different light configuration son a race track.

What I find hard to see past (once I noticed it) is the fact that the car has a completely wrong rear spoiler fitted. As much as I like the curves of the one on the model, the real car has a huge rear spoiler which looks much better and should have been on the model. I have been assured that this will be rectified for future models in 2015.

I have only managed to find the one picture of the side view which is too far away to see all the sponsor, however the decals certainly look to be in the correct locations with the correct size all except the two small ones located on the sun visor section, one of which is simply a noise test sticker.

The model itself has very fine, detailed decals which are crisp and vivid with the white not allowing any colour through.

The fine sponsorship logos below the door show a great eye for detail, it is a shame that the tyres do not have the logo’s on. The car was actually raced with both yellow and silver wheels, Scalextric opted for the silver which is a shame as the yellow would have set the car apart a little.

I was slightly disappointed at another dark green version when there are surely other liveries out there from this year that could have been chosen, I will cross my fingers for these to come out in 2015 with hopefully a rerelease of the liveries found on the SR cars

The car itself measures 13.5cm from the front to rear and 5.6cm at the widest point and just 4.2cm at its highest point when in a slot. The wheelbase is 8cm from the centre of the wheels. There is a magnet located directly under the motor, this can be removed for those that wish to race without magnets. I leave mine in as I like to race straight from box.

The quality of this particular model is spot on, nothing is loose, no paint defects, the gears are smooth and the soldering is all excellent.

The car has a DPR socket to accept the C8515 and has full front and rear xenon effect lights. The wheels are plastic as you would expect on a Scalextric car.

The cars RRP is £39.99 which fall in line with most of the Scalextric high detail cars. A slight reduction in price would likely see additional sales of these cars, especially considering the resent flood of Scalextric cars on the market at reduced prices of almost 50%. I feel if they sold for £30 to match Carrera they would not have to sell them at a later date at a sale price which makes people wonder if they should just hold off buying one till the price drops.

Performance:

The motor is the standard 18k Mabuchi is a sidewinder configuration found on the majority of Scalextric cars being release at the moment. I have already stated my dislike of the sidewinder configuration due to a large gear on the axle and that it picks up more than its fair share of dust and fluff. To counterbalance this argument my preference for inline is a self-contained gearing with a small pinions gear turning a crown gear that is far away from dust and fluff, above the chassis of the car in most cases. For the home racer this would extend the time between having to maintain the axle and gears, as any father will know, any maintenance time to a child is far too long as they simply want to race. This means for those people that want to true a tyre lower to bring the cars centre of gravity down as low as possible and increase magnetic effect, they can.

When testing performance I set the voltage to 14v and ran a test against a number of cars taking the fastest lap. The tracks total lane length was 25.86m as I used a single cross over to double the size of the track as shown below, unfortunately I had no borders on the track but found that would have made little difference.

NSR	Ford GT40	12.501
Scalextric	Chevrolet Camaro GT	18.896
Scalextric	Chevrolet Corvette C6R	17.195
Scalextric	Bugatti Veygrom	17.123
Scalextric	Lotuse Exige V6	13.189
Scalextric	Masseratti Toefoe	15.903
Scalextric	Lotus Evora	13.358

 

As you can see, apart from the NSR the Evora out performed great against the other GT cars, certainly a good choice and something a little different on the track.

Thank you for reading this review, I hope to bring more to you soon.