For many of us, memories of childhood slot car sets involved joylessly struggling with several pieces of identical-looking track with rusted contacts and flimsy cars that sailed off the track at so much as a hint of a corner. This was further compounded by the fact that the whole thing had to be packed away at mom’s behest as soon as Carte Blanche or a favourite soapie demanded the television be returned.
Well, there were no such issues in the realms of the 2010 European Wing Car Championship in Helsinki, Finland – just an eight-lane, 45-metre track and some of the fastest slot cars ever conceived.
These competition-spec wing cars are so fast that keeping an eye on them is no mean feat – they can dispatch the 0-100 km/h dash in a hypercar-humbling 0,3 seconds and with top speeds in the range of 80-160 km/h, the lap times sit in the 1,5 to 3,0-second bracket. As opposed to the comparative electric toothbrush motor that did service in your childhood slot cars, these wing cars are powered by electric motors capable of revving up to a frankly bonkers 300 000 r/min at 16 volts!
It’s seriously mesmeric stuff…