| December 22, 2005 Review |
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 AutoArt Porsche 911 (996) GT3-RS By Shawn Smith Appearance:  Just as you would expect from any product of AutoArt the brand new Porsche 911 (996) Gt3-RS is a stunning new slot car model. Being modeled on the 2004 version of the 911 (996) GT3-RS Auto-Art has released this car in two versions both of which are painted white although each different versions is decorated differently, one being trimmed in red with red wheels and the other being trimmed in blue as our test subject shows.  Styling wise the AutoArt 911 GT3-RS very accurately captures the looks and features of the 1:1 prototype and from the many images that I found in researching the car AutoArt looks to have replicated this car in 1/32 scale with respectable accuracy.  Taking a look at the front of the AutoArt 911 everything here appears dead on images found of the car with of course the exception of the LEDs protruding through the back of the headlamp buckets. This is obviously no fault of AutoArt as there is no better way to really recreate working headlights in a 1/32 scale car and once the lights are lit up you really have a hard time noticing anything BUT the lights.  Man these things are bright! Giving off the blue-ish coloration typical of a Xenon lighting system the LEDs AutoArt has used in this Porsche 911 do a fantastic job of giving off sufficient light to pull off the effect.  Swinging around to the back of the 911 the initial observation is that the car is rather plain boasting a small light blue 'GT3RS' hot-stamped logo between the tailights and the fading out of the light blue striping from the sides of the car. The upper portion of the large rear wing does get the same metallic 'taupe-ish' grey paint also used to paint the side-view mirrors and the tailights are detailed with both red and clear plastic.  In contrast to the brightness of the front LEDs the rear LEDs used for the tailights are dim by comparison and in a normally lit room you might not even notice the tailights are working. In a darkened room the do stand out more but even in the image above the lights have been lowered a lot and the car is sitting at full throttle however the red glow is still pretty faint.  Interior wise the AutoArt 911 is a little plain as compared with other recent AutoArt releases like the 2005 Mustang GT which comes with two-toned interior features and more detail accenting while the interior in the 911 GT3RS is done all in black with white roll bars and tiny amounts of white details being applied to dash features like the guages and control knobs.  Like the AutoArt Mustang the 911 does come with a male driver figure, which in earlier AutoArt releases drivers were not included, and now that AutoArt has commited to adding drivers it would also appear that they going the extra step of including a passenger figure in their street inspired slot cars. Painted with a nice pink blouse and modeled wearing a mini-skirt AutoArt's female passenger has been getting a lot of 'seat time' in some really nice AutoArt cars as of late.  Working our way down the wheels the accuracy here is dead on even if you have to look really closely to see it. Each of the rims blue spokes have blue paint between them, with alternating gaps finished in silver, and images of the prototype show this to be true of the 1:1 as well. Five tiny sunken wheel lugs are detailed in silver paint and you'll need to look very closely to see the 'RS' logo painted in the center of each rim but I assure you it is there and is surprisingly crisp for such a tiny graphic.  Wrapping up the 'looks' portion of this review the car really couldn't be much better. This 911 GT3RS is a stunning looker to be certain and if it runs anything close to as good as it looks owners will be very pleased. Time to check out how it runs. Performance:  Before hitting the track lets take it all apart and get a good look at the inside. Screws on either side of the guide need to be removed as do two screws from the rear engine detail area of the chassis.   With the body now unscrewed and removed all of the wiring needed to power the front and rear lights are visable and thankfully AutoArt includes a white plug that can be disconnected to make working on the car a little easier.  Taking a look at the rear of the chassis the sidewinder motor configuration and axle are fitted with white plastic gearing, the axle gear being one of the thinnest on an RTR that I can remember, and the axle is held in the chassis via brass axle bushings.  A bar magnet is fitted by AutoArt under the rear axle and appears to be secured by nothing more than a bit of glue. The strength of this magnet is actually pretty strong which is one reason I was a little surprised to see...  A second identical bar magnet also glued in the middle of the chassis behind where the wiring connects to the guide contacts. With two of these bar magnets in place the car is no doubt very stuck down and some of you may opt to remove one of these depending on your driving preference. More on that in a minute.   If you look closely at the two pictures above you should notice a difference in where the front axle bushings are sitting in their mounts and yes it is of the same bushing. The axle is permitted to have a lot of up and down movement and not so surprisingly the axle bushings are very loose in their mounts. Normally this isn't much of an issue but in this case the amount of movement was cause for a strange 'chattering' noise as the AutoArt Porsche made its way around my layout and after tracking down the reason for the noise I kept the car in the slot to make certain the wheels were sitting at one of their highest points then I Superglued each bushing in their mounts. Noise removed!  With the quieting of the front bushings another noise became more evident and this time I traced the sound to a vibration coming from the wheels themselves. Taking off the rubber on all four wheels I found small plastic burs left behind from the molding process. Some of these were worse than others and needed to be sanded smooth and once that was taken care of the vibration was gone but another problem was found. I know several readers and racers who have commented on the less than desirable rubber tires used by AutoArt and this might be one of those occasions for several reasons. First, the rubber used to make these treaded are often out of round or so 'giving' that they fail to fit the rim properly. In the case of this 911 GT3-RS the width of the rear tires is almost too small for the rim and the overall diameter of the tire too large so once I removed the flashing from each wheel the tires had a tendancy to roll off of the rims during hard cornering. If you find this to be the case with yours it might be worth while to glue the rear tires to the rims.  So... with the chassis lubed and the bushings and tires glued I set off to see just how fast I could make the AutoArt 911 (996) GT3-RS go. Accleration was decent although not impressive and braking was a bit on the weak side. Blame both on a gearing combination better suited for top speed than torque (12-tooth pinion and 38-tooth spur). Straight line speed in contrast is very good and I got the feeling not even half of the cars top speed was being felt on my 14-foot front straight. In the turns the two bar magnets seemed to slow the car down a little bit and managed to magnify the reduced torque of the gearing so as I'm sure many others will do I have considered taking out that second bar magnet many times now. Fastest lap time around my twisty 60-foot test track worked out to be 6.062 time and I'm certain the times would drop even lower if the car wasn't so pinned down or the gearing had more torque. Down the straights its a very fast but you need to plan earlier for the turns due to the lack of braking. You can get on the gas sooner coming out of a turn however with the car being so stuck down and the torque being as light as it is. The Final Verdict:  With the testing completed what the AutoArt Porsche 911 (996) GT3-RS is to me is an impressive looking recreation of the prototype that is visually as good as anyone could ask for. Performance wise the AutoArt 911 leaves something to be desired, gearing mostly, but is still a fast car in its own right that benefits from a little tuning mentioned in the review. If you plan to pick one of these up for your collection just check the mentioned areas first to help provide the best experience possible. Special thanks go to SlotCarWorld.com for providing the new AutoArt Porsche 911 (996) GT3-RS for review. As always, feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions and I will be happy to answer anything that I can. Happy Slotting! Shawn Smith SJSlots@hotmail.com |
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