These reviews are done on my custom Carrera 1/24 Exclusiv road course layout.  

Test Drive Results - Ten Lap Sprint:

* Data does include some minor wrecks during the course of the trial run...

Test Drive Observations:

I eagerly awaited the arrival of the Pink-Kar 1/32 1954 VW Beetle slot car at my local hobby shop.  Since my review of the New VW Beetle from Scalextric, I was hoping for the perfect companion to it.  Well, I was excited and then somewhat disappointed.  Many people do not like the Pink-Kar chassis since it has an HO can motor.  Many 1/32 enthusiasts claim the HO motor is not all that powerful and too small, well they never saw one of those tuned-up Wizzard Patriots run...

Looking at the body:  The car is highly detailed with chrome all around with some parts detailed painted - close to FLY standards - good job!!!  You also get a nice little decal sheet with many choices of license plates to stick on the car.  The interior features two people, a guy and a lady which look ok from the outside of the car.  This neat little car has a perfect cream maroon two tone paint job and cute little dog-dish chrome hub caps on the wheels.  The big problem comes when comparing this to other 1/32 scale cars.  I do not have a true VW Beetle to measure the car out but it looks too small to me when compared to the Scalextric New VW Beetle.  This is the one main nitpick I have.

From testing the Pink-Kar Ferrari 250, I expected decent performance out of this little car.  It goes pretty well but it hits the top end pretty quickly.  Pink-Kar should have used a Tomy type can motor for some little bit more power out of the car.  I think it would be pretty easy to hop up this Tyco HP7 style motor with some of the HO racing hop up parts.  Maybe a rewound armature or something with a traction magnet added to ease the handling trouble it would have.  The car drives ok on the course but is a little tipsy around the curves when you apply the throttle.  The car holds the track good for NOT having a traction magnet.  The sticky rubber tires help with keeping the car planted on the group but it likes to get away from you once in a while.  This is the reason if you decide to upgrade the motor to add some sort of traction magnet or weight to tame the handling beast.

So overall the car gets a 3 out of 5 tires rating for the scale, handling, and speed problems.  The fit and finish is good on the car from Pink-Kar so they might give FLY a run for it's money in the detail department soon.  I would still recommend it to VW slot car enthusiats but does not get a highly recommended rating.

Now if we could only get some companies to do American muscle cars or street cars like the Camaro, Firebird, Mustang, and Charger.  A current generation 2001 Mustang and 2001 Camaro would be nice.  Carrera is going to release some 1/32 muscle cars soon so we will have to wait and see how these are when they come out.

Slot Car Garage Review Rating:  3 out of 5 tires!!!

Head back to the main reviews section at Slot Car Garage or check below for more reviews...

RadTrax-sponsored  Reviews Archive:

1. 1/32 MRRC Shelby Cobra 427 "Blue"

2. 1/32 Scalextric New VW Beetle PIRELLI #3

3. 1/32 Ninco EVITA #50198 Porsche 356-A Coupe

4. 1/32 ProSlot Toyota GT1 Esso Ultron #17

5. 1/32 MRRC Chaparral 2 "White" #MC-9906

6. 1/32 FLY A73 - Porsche 911 GT1 Evo II MOBIL 1 98 Test Car #1

7. 1/32 Scalextric Caterham 7 Coldstream #C2201

Current and Past Reviews (some from Slot Car Racing on the Net):

1. Return to Main Reviews Section - Read more of my personal reviews and others of related slot car items including cars, sets, parts, etc. regarding all the scales (1/24, 1/32, HO)

2. More Slot Car Test Drive Results - Current data from testing on my Carrera 1/24 Exclusiv track.  Includes results from 1/24 and 1/32 scale slot cars.

3. Slot Car Test Drive Results - This is a run-down of the various slot cars I tested with their average, best lap times and the total time it took the car to complete the ten lap trial run.  These cars were tested on my Riggen 1/32 layout. 

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