| March 7 2005 Review |
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 Click Here To Order This Item Now Ninco McLaren F1 GTR ‘LACK’ By Shawn Smith Click here to have Genie read this review out loud to you in Microsoft Agent AUDIO! [Click here to chat about this item on our Forum] Appearance:  Here is the latest Ninco McLaren in its very striking orange and gray ‘LACK’ livery. I can only hope that my camera does a well enough job showing the car’s color as it really is a great looking paint scheme. The grayish center band has a rich metallic effect and the orange on the nose and the tail are both vivid and deep.  In the details department the Ninco McLaren falls somewhere near the middle of the ‘detail spectrum’. Separately added details like the headlight covers and red front marker lights highlight the front end details just as dark red round tail light pieces and the wide rear wing frame up the back end of the car.   Looking down on the car from above you may or not be able to tell that Ninco has chose to ‘blacken out’ the glass panels on either side of the rear engine hatch. This obviously camouflages the missing motor details normally found in the real McLaren F1 GTR engine bay although this method of modeling isn’t anything to fault Ninco for. Yes there are collectors that want as much detail as possible however there are also racers that are thankful for the weight savings this creates.  The interior is another area where detailing on the McLaren is limited. Our driver has two arms and a head and little else. This basic ‘tray style’ interior isn’t anything new for the McLaren and again it frees up both the weight of a simulated full interior as well as room for tweaking the car inside of the body and chassis.  Retouching on the cars finish this is yet another example of fine workmanship on behalf of Ninco. The paint is very attractive, very glossy and the tampo-graphics are crisp and well done. I did find one little area that possessed a small, unexplained, black smudge near the left front headlight but it was minor at best. Another nice paint job by Ninco!  One obvious change for the McLaren F1 comes in the way of new rims for this release. Those of you who picked up the new Ninco Honda NSX should find these new wheels to be familiar and I found them to be a nice change from the 5-spoke design incorporated on previous models. Please note that nothing was wrong with the previous 5-spoke design, as the McLaren was typically sold wearing 5-spoke rims, yet these new 6-spoke rims are good-looking wheels. Performance:  Taking the body off of the chassis requires the removal of four equal length screws as found above highlighted in green. Unlike the above-mentioned NSX this is one area I am quite pleased with. While some might prefer as few screws as possible I personally find that opposing screws help to avoid chassis warping found on some models having only 1 center mounted screw.  Without the body the chassis of the Ninco McLaren is a pretty simple affair. The chassis has some side trays where weight tuning can be performed and that might be needed as there is little room near the back of the model for weight or additional magnet tuning. Before going any further on that subject let’s keep going and someone please remind me to talk about tuning before I finish, ok?  Up front the Ninco McLaren helps keep its own guide in the slot thanks to Ninco’s sprung guide assembly. Braids on the McLaren needed a bit of spreading for optimal performance and I found it helps to slightly turn the ends down while angling them outward from the guide.  Getting the power of the McLaren to the track comes in the way of an in-line motor configuration using a brass pinion, plastic crown and axle spinning inside of brass bushings. Now whether or not you’ve noticed the trend this is the fifth Ninco car to come equipped with the 20,000-RPM NC-5 so it would appear that Ninco is serious about making fast cars. The issue then becomes making sure all of the NC-5’s power is used efficiently and when talking about stock traction we have to talk ‘magnet’.  The traditional Ninco button magnet makes an appearance, once again, and like it or leave it the magnet placement allows for some pretty slippery driving conditions for anyone piloting the McLaren. Fans of the Ninco McLaren will no doubt be adjusted to this by now however if you are a new hobbyist who started your slot life with the Ninco NSX you may be surprised by their handling differences.  So why do they handle so differently? From the picture above I think it’s pretty obvious how far forward the button magnet of the McLaren sits once the rear axles are lined up. Lining both cars up nose to tail places both magnets near the middle of the overall car yet the magnet relation to the position of the rear axle seems to play a huge part in handling. Difficult thing here is how to tune the McLaren with the inline motor taking up the best usable room in the rear of the chassis as adding an additional magnet, or a stronger magnet farther back in the chassis for that matter, becomes a difficult thing to accomplish.  Now some of you might be asking ‘why?’ would I even consider adding a stronger or additional magnet to the McLaren. The hard part for me is taking two cars that in reality should perform very similarly only to find out one is considerably faster than the other. This is the case when placing the McLaren on the same track with Ninco’s NSX as the NSX simply out handles the McLaren. Both run the same NC-5, both use the same wheels and tires and both use the same button style magnet. Lap times tell the story however as at 118 feet the NSX ran consistent sub-eleven second laps clocking in at almost two full seconds faster than the McLaren could manage. With a fast lap of 12.93 it took some reactionary driving to try and keep the McLaren’s back end in check. Take in to consideration that the latest Ninco Sebring Corvette classic posted a fast lap of 13.52 and some racers might be left wondering how to get more speed out of a car that seemingly should be quicker. The Final Verdict:  With the dust settling on the tire tracks of the new Ninco McLaren F1 GTR ‘LACK’ I’m left a little conflicted. While there is no arguing Ninco has pulled off another top-notch effort in the looks department I can’t help but wonder if a chassis change might have been in order for this beautiful car especially considering that Ninco raised its own ‘performance bar’ with the recent NSX. I realize that tooling costs are saved by using ‘what has always worked’ yet in reality the McLaren falls a bit short of its Ninco cousin’s performance because of it. The new Ninco McLaren ‘LACK’ is a great offering from Ninco and as I’ve witnessed of past releases of the McLaren it will no doubt be sought after. It will out perform previous Ninco McLarens simply from the addition of the higher RPM NC-5 motor but that’s only if you can keep the traction at the rear wheels. It can be a real handful to drive fast but for so many out there that is the fun and challenge in slot car racing. If you get one or have a previous version with the new NC-5 loaded I would love to hear tuning tips from our readers! Thanks go to the folks at MRC – Model Rectifier Corp for providing me this new Ninco Ninco McLaren F1 GTR ‘LACK’ slot car . 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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