Growing up in England Scalextric was a household name. Almost every kid had a set, but even then it was often hard to find someone to race with.

I tried using two controllers, one in each hand, but it did not work. I tried rubber bands to set one controller running on its own, still no challenge. How was I ever going to get good enough to become the next Jim Clark or Graham Hill?

Not many of my mates could keep the racing fun, and when beaten they never came back.

I tried racing with my brothers and sister, but they had no dreams for becoming the next World Champion and offered little competition. They did not take racing Scalextric seriously: My brothers dreaming of becoming the next star player for the England Football Team and my sister preferred playing with her Bay City Rollers dolls or trying to play dress up with my youngest brother.

I needed competition… sadly I never found it. That is my excuse as to why I never became a World Champion racing driver.

Today’s Scalextric racers have no such excuses. All they need to do is purchase the Challenger Car Set and they are on their way.

Seriously this is a fun play item that can, depending on how you play against it, give you a good run for your money or beat you bad.

Okay… enough of the story and down to cold hard facts.

As I mentioned above in great detail, I was looking for someone to race against, and I had tested an early Challenger prototype some time ago, so I was anxious to see how well the production car worked.

Like all normal males I opened the packaging and ignored the instructions. Heck, I tested this anyway so what did I need to know?

Looking for a car from the same series as the CLK, I chose a Scalextric Opel with its working head and taillights. I was not going to be outdone by Challenger with his flashing orange safety lights.

To start the race I put the Challenger on the track first and he drove up to the magnets under the track. I placed my Opel next to the Challenger and pressed the second button on the back of the Start Gantry. On came the red lights: 1, 2, 3, 4… then green: Go, go, go!

It had to be tougher then that, so I tried the “Fast” setting. I put the Challenger car on again, about six inches from the start line (the magnets under the track) and he drove up and sat waiting. I lined up my Opel and set the Start Gantry to Fast mode (the third button). The lights turned red: 1, 2, 3, 4… then green and off shot the Challenger car with more speed this time. I set off in pursuit and worked harder to catch up, but still I was able to easily pass and even lap him.

This did not look good.

But just how much quicker?

Lets test the settings out, I thought, so I tried it again on my Classic track and trained the car with the switch in the Sport position. On the Slow setting (second button on the Start Gantry) the car runs 6.2 second laps. Testing it on the Fast setting (third button on the Start Gantry) bumps the time down to 5.6 seconds; on that pace an Opel can beat him easily.

I retrained Challenger in Classic mode (flick the switch on the bottom of the Challenger Car) and on the Slow setting the Challenger ran a 4.7 second lap. In Fast mode it ran 4.4 seconds, and now I knew that I had my work cut out for me.

Sure, a Formula One car can get around my test track in less than 4 seconds, and I can probably get the Opel down to around 4.2, but I make mistakes and the Challenger car just keeps on going.

OK, now I had figured out most of the settings, so I decided to make it even more of a challenge. I increased the difficulty by switching the Challenger to the slightly shorter lane 3 and put my car in the longer lane 4. Now if I get beaten I have an excuse, I have a longer lane; although it does not seem that the Challenger driver is listening to my complaints.

To make it a good race, I tried one of the older Opels fitted with a dot magnet. Now I had trouble keeping up and this was where the Challenger really came into its own. If you find a car that runs lap times close to the Challenger, you will probably tire or make an error before the end of the race. Now, if only I could get him to run more than 25 laps…

Back to those instructions.

If you want to race 50 laps you have to press either the Slow or Fast button and immediately press the Learn button. I tried this a bunch of times before I got it right. When Scalextric's directions say immediately they mean it. Not at the same time, not with a one-second delay--immediately.

I found this feature a bit fiddly, and the first thing I could not easily resolve by reading the instructions.

I trained the car and after a bit of braid adjustment due to the lower height on Sport track, the car started off. The Challenger ran well but I did need to clean the tires for Sport track. I tested against the old style Opel and the Challenger was harder to beat on this layout. With clean tires on the Opel I could get away, but one slide and the Challenger was all over me. We tried various settings and on the fast setting, the car was very hard to beat. To experiment we turned up the power supply to 15 volts. The Challenger started to slide coming out of the last corner onto the main straight. We continued turning up the power until the Challenger crashed out at just over 15 volts.

While training on the adjustable supply we set the voltage to 12 volts. This gave a fair pace as the other car was also running at 12 volts. Once trained you could turn up the power and the Challenger remained on the track. It did not seem a problem until the car starts to slide, then it started to lose it’s way and crash.

We tried training in the Classic setting (here the car seems to get more power anyway, probably to compensate for the raised rails on Classic track) and tried both Slow and Fast modes. With an adjustable power supply you can fine-tune the car to the limit of grip on your track by training the car in either Sport or Classic mode and by running at Slow or Fast paces. This gave a lot of adjustment to the car, and makes the Challenger a more flexible product.

I switched to the Scalextric slicks (W8528) that come on the standard Scalextric CLK and this improved the performance. I also discovered how to sand tires on the Challenger car. To do this you need to slowly swing the car from left to right, which operates the guide and tricks the car into thinking it is running around the track. If you sand the tires without moving the car on the guide the car goes into Shutdown mode after two seconds. This feature prevents the motor from overheating if an obstacle in the car's path holds the Challenger back (by obstacle, it usually meant my car when I crashed in front of the Challenger trying to hold him off of lapping me).

After switching to slicks the car still came off way too much even on Slow, so I changed the power supply to the Carrera 14 volt pack included with Carrera's 1/32 scale sets. I was able to train and race the Challenger on the Slow setting consistently. On Fast, the lighter magnetic grip of the Carrera track still caused more crashes than I liked, but it did work.

Now I decided to take down the Carrera bank, as the Challenger car could not figure it out anyway. I retrained the car and now I had a challenge on my hands.

I had chosen to run the new Fly Ferrari 365 I am about to review and try as I might I could not even give the Challenger a run for his money. The Fly Ferrari on Carrera track is fairly loose and the Challenger would run away in a few laps, coming around to lap me several times during a 25 lap run.

On Carrera track you need a 14 volt or lower power supply. It is better to switch to the W8528 slick tires and you must train the car in Sport mode (switch on the bottom of the car) and tires must be clean.

To conclude, I have had a blast trying all the different options of the Challenger car. If I had been able to get one as a kid, who knows where I would be today?

Look out Michael, I’ve got to get practicing.

Hey it’s OK to dream… see you at the races.

Cheers,

Alan

PS: Don’t tell my brothers.

One more test:

A few people told me they were having problems with their Challenger cars so I did additional testing on setup of the car. It is very important that you have a good running layout without power drops around the circuit. You can test this on your home track by disconnecting the last piece of track next to your power base, so you have an incomplete circuit, and drive a car slowly around the track. If your car slows or stops, inspect and correct the last connection before the spot where the car had problems and then continue around the track. While you are doing this, test all of the lanes so your complete track will be well connected. The reason for disconnecting the track is that power normally flows both ways around your circuit, hiding poor connections and causing inconsistent performance.

After fixing poor track joints you can attach booster cables. These should be used about every 12-15 feet of track on each lane. Avoid using booster cables to hide or fix bad track joints. Fix the track first then hook up the booster cables.

Using conductive grease on every track joint will also protect track built and used in cool or damp conditions. This helps prevent corrosion in the joint and keeps your track running at top performance.

The only other thing I have heard of is one car that sat stationary with its light flashing in the fast sequence (double speed). This is a warning sign indicating that the car is held back (by me crashing in front of it) or that the motor has run too hot. A safety switch fitted to the car's motor casing will switch off if the motor runs too hot. After a cool-down period, the car's lights should switch back to their normal sequence and the car will run normally.

If you have a car that flashes in the fast sequence and does not run after cooling down (or never ran) this is not a setup issue and you should contact Scalextric USA's Technical Department for assistance. I personally did not have a problem and all the cars tested ran fine.