The Carrera Digital 132 Wireless GT Racers set is the ultimate starter set to enter the next generation of Carrera slot car racing.
Carrera Digital offers new freedom to compete in exciting new ways. Up to four racers can take to the track at once, and strategically change lanes at will.
I found out over the weekend that my local Southern California Toys R Us is carrying Carrera Go. The one I went to had about four different sets, including the Police Chase I already bought from Amazon and the Mario Kart set.
I picked up a Nascar set, and after testing the box layout for a few minutes I have a layout set up combining the two sets. Pics coming soon..
I received my Carrera Go Police Chase set over the weekend.
Initially I’m very impressed with the quality of the track and parts. For a product that is considered “toy-class,” the assembly takes a little bit longer than I would have expected, and it seems like some of the parts could break fairly easily if they were handled roughly. The track has a rigid feel to it as opposed to more flexible tracks like Scalextric.
Putting the track together there are tabs on the end of each track piece that slide into one another along with the connectivity tabs. Once that goes together, there are clips that go on each side of the track to hold it in place. When I first received the set, I did set it up without putting the clips on very quickly in a temporary spot just to try it out. It will run reasonably well without putting in the clips, but it did seem like the track wanted to separate without the clips. I think you could really only run it clipless on a very small track for a short period of time.
Once you attach the clips, the track becomes very solid. You can have a 4 or 5 piece section of the track that is a very firm, you can pick it up as one unit. It has a nice rigid feel - it feels very weighty and very substantial, not at all like a kid’s toy. But, being that it’s rigid, I would wager that stepping on it for instance (if you have it set up on the floor) would be a bad thing. It would probably damage some of the tabs.
The only piece that I wasn’t totally enthused about was the guard rail attachments. Everything else, like I said, has a very solid and well connected feel when it goes together. The guardrail tabs tend to slide around and seem to come off very easily. They could be a little bit tighter fit. On the other hand, they look very cool when attached, especially along with the red and white striping on the edge of the turns.
The cars are pretty nice. They aren’t quite as detailed as 1/32nd scale cars, but they are a little nicer than I expected. They have some very nice detail elements. The police car has working police lights, which is very cool. The Corvette actually has a blue light underneath it that lights up as it goes around - the car has a clear bottom, and the light is inside.
The cars are very powerful on this track. For a track this small, you can’t really open them up without shooting them off the track. With the turbo button on the controller (I’ll talk more about this in a minute) you can pretty much remove the car from the track at any location just by hitting that button.
The police car has a higher center of gravity than the Corvette. I haven’t done much racing on the set yet (just a few laps with my girlfriend), but the cars definitely feel a bit unbalanced with an advantage going to the Corvette. I prefer stock set cars to be a bit more closely matched than these.
On the default layout, there doesn’t seem to be a distinct lane advantage.
The controllers are interesting. The feel of the plunger is a little stiff, but I was able to get decent control out of it. It obviously doesn’t have the feel of a good aftermarket controller from Parma or similar. But it does have the interesting (slightly gimmicky, but still fun) turbo feature. According to the manual, the plunger takes you from 0-70% power, and the turbo button is 100% power. On this particular set, I can use the turbo button coming out of one of the turns toward the straight away for a split second tap - any longer than that and the car doesn’t have time to slow down by the end of the straight and make the next turn. But it seems like it definitely gives a significant burst of power. On a track with a long straight away it would probably be a lot of fun.
For just under $50 (about the price of one good 1/32 scale car), I got a very nice full set including everything needed. The 1/43 format is nicer than I expected, feeling more like 1/32 than HO (although I haven’t tried ripping out the magnets to get the cars to slide yet!). I’d definitely recommend this set if you just want to check out the 1/43 format without a large investment. And, when Carrera Digital 143 comes out this track can be used with a digital set to build a bigger layout.
I’ve been wanting to check out the Carrera 1/43 scale slot car system, so I just ordered a little starter set - the Carrera Go Police Chase
It should arrive by this weekend, so I’ll let you know what I think next week. I’m curious to see how the Carrera quality carries over into the smaller scale.
If you want to try it out yourself, it’s only $47 on Amazon
What a great system! Slotcar track on cables, retracts to the ceiling. This is a great space saver!
“My system pulls 8 cables back to a traveler. Hanging the track is the best thing I ever did to make 1/24 scale model car racing even more enjoyable.”
Duration : 0:2:2
Over at HO Slot Car Racing it looks like they’re working on a cool project - a HUGE outdoor Carrera slots layout.
Check out all the details and more great photos after the jump - I especially like the gnomes!
Outdoor Racing On The Parkmoor Garden Raceway
in the dark corners of an old basement, nick and i drift slot cars. they are 1:32 scale carrera slot cars, and they are a bit difficult to drift (not like the cars that can turn 360 degrees, ot like the easy drifting 1:43 scale ones. these are bigger and harder to drift, and they fall off often). the song is the tetris theme, korbeiniki, by ozma.
Duration : 0:2:18
Best Nascar commercial i think i have ever seen …Brings back memories…when everyone wanted a slot car track Race set .
What do you think ?
I agree 100% It is the best Commercial thats been out lately!!!!!
This looks so cool…great passing in a 6 car race with 4 ‘ghost cars’ and automatic start sequence
Duration : 0:0:51
I want one! If you know where I can get one of these very limited (1 of 1000) sets for a reasonable price in the U.S. please shoot me a note.
I’ve found one in Australia and one in Germany… both end up being over $700 shipped.
This looks like the ultimate digital 1/24 slot car set at the moment, although there are a couple of new ones set to ship in the next month or two that might give it a run for it’s money. I want some digital 1/24 Carrera Slots.
Here’s a link to the German site for this slot car set pumped through the Google translator. I’m trying to learn German so I can do a good job on this site, but it might take me a couple of weeks (right!), so in the meantime I’ll be relying on the Google brain.
Carrera Exclusive Digital Limited Edition