Well. Let me say, firstly I am not anti NSR.. Not at all. But as I am a catholic slotracer (not the Roman type!!) I strive for equality on the track. This involves guidelines which level the playing field, and one of those guidelines is an 18,000 rpm/12v motor limit. This guideline has been instrumental in retaining Q32 and Slotcar Legends club racers of all abilities in the club racing scene. This allows those with fixed budgets to compete with deeper pockets and knowing they are racing equal machinery...leaving their talent to finish the job. More recently we have occasionally raced Slot.its as more guys obtain them but all this time there has been no class for the NSR Marque.... until now. NSR's first Model was the Mosler which, quite frankly, they did to death!! Over the last several years you have been able to buy an NSR Mosler in the colour and flavour of your choice! Then came the Clio....
Well, I didn't see THAT one coming.!! Anyways, on we slogged and at last we got the GT 40, a bit sporadic in appearance but still with the quicker motor. Still no NSR's on the track? Close behind the GT40 came the Porsche 917!! This was a no brainer to me as there were already some great 917's already in the market place, quick ones too at a lot less cost! But now Aaaaah! the Ford 3 litre or P68 as it eventually was to become known as!! now there was a smart move. Even if this is the closest I can get to devoting some hard earned cash to a beautiful model, there are a couple of anomolies. Firstly, because of NSR's policy of everything local made, this model is nearly $120.00 in our shops before postage! And on top of that I fear it has seccumbed to the creeping Ninco disease. that being the exageration of scale!! Ninco were one of the first to make models with a 1/32 scale length and a 1/28th scale width or less! Having the old Airfix '68 3 litre Ford I thought this one looked very broad in the beam.
On tracking down some contemprary dimensions for this car I found the model height to be spot on 1/32, it's length was a bit more exagerated but when it came to width, well!! The overall width of the real job was 5 feet 10 inches. If my maths is right, that is 1778 millimetres! didvided by thirty two I get 55.56 mm. overall width, not axle width, yet the NSR model is advertised as having an axle width of 62.0 mm?? That is a difference of just under six and a half millimetres!! Check it out on your verniers, that is a lot of width!! 206 mm in real 1/1 speak!! Have NSR jumped on the ageing Ninco bandwagon and sold out to dimension exageration in the name of raceability!! Where does it stop. It is interesting to note that if you read some of their early archives they profess to be ardent scale modellers for the sake of slotracing. A more recent entry regarding the 917 inaccuracies sees them declare these to be race models at the expense of accuracy!! So where do you stand Mr NSR and as scale model racers where do we draw the line, vestigial front wheels, lexan interiors, poor scale adherence? I see the word womp shimmering in the distance, is that where we are going? If so, why not just buy a plafit and be done with it!!
As a race group organiser I have seen one club implode in recent years because of SCM dominance. Fortunately we pulled it back from the brink just in time, and now, three years later, we struggle to keep the numbers BELOW sixteen on race nights! This is because we insist on parity and scale models 'out of the box' and for the first time this year. because modern slotcar wheels are so good, we have relaxed the metal wheel guideline, because they are no longer an advantage. This wasn't achieved by deep pockets and lack of attention to scale!. As for the price hurdle, I suggest, Mr NSR, you bite the bullet and send production to China. You might then see more of your models on a greater diversity of tracks and in a greater variety of racing.
Until then, does anyone want to lend me a P68??
