Scalextric Lotus 49B - Kurt Moser - Home Racing World & The Slot Car Garage

11/12/2013

Scalextric 1968 Lotus 49b

Welcome Addition to the Vintage GP Stable

By Kurt “El Secundo” Moser

Everyone loves a winner, and in 1968 Lotus brought home the bacon in the British Grand Prix with the beautiful 49b, Jo Siffert at the wheel. Since this win, no other private grand prix team has posted a victory, making this the last gasp before corporate interests would move in and dominate the sport. Scalextric staked their claim to this beloved racing era with their 1967 ‘Year of Legends’ set, and did such a good job with the late 1960’s open-wheelers, that nobody else has really ventured into this territory.

Today’s offering represents the logical follow-up to the 1967 cars, breaking into the 1968 season with the high-wing Lotus 49b. This season saw the earliest attempts at aerodynamic devices in grand prix racing, and we’ll get a look at how Scalextric did with this iconic car.

As the successor to the 1967 Scalextric Year of Legends cars, expectations are high. To be honest, if all Scalextric did was add a high wing and a couple of canards on the nose, then this car is already a winner. According to the camera, the Lotus delivers with nice proportions and the gorgeous blue paint of the Rob Walker team. So, before demolishing this beauty on the track, let’s admire the construction of the car with a few pictures. As wonderful as the car looks with its well-executed tire decals, the coolant return pipe along the left side of the fuselage, and those lovely trumpets behind Siffert’s helmet, don’t look to it for ‘ultimate detail’. Scalextric does avoid some of the minor details that might upset some folks who want to get up close and personal with the car. The rear wing struts are on the large/thick side, and there’s no hint of the linkages used to change the wing’s angle of attack. They also didn’t bother to put a gear lever in the car – odd for an open-cockpit vintage car, but certainly understandable given the delicate nature of the beast. The steering wheel is red, though it’s supposed to be black as raced in the ’68 British GP. Seriously, you have to look for these things specifically to notice them, and have absolutely no relevance on track. One detail that may make a difference is that Jo Siffert’s arms appear to bend the wrong way. We can only assume this is some attempt to pay homage to Siffert’s early circus career as “Joey, the Double-Jointed Wonder Boy”. This is a more visible transgression, and can be seen from 50 feet away without binoculars. But seriously, these trivial complaints don’t detract from the Lotus’ overall appearance, which is quite beautiful.

So with the honeymoon out of the way, it’s time to see some slot car guts! It’s worth mentioning that you really don’t need to open the car right away. It’s greased from the factory, and you have access to the axle bushings from the exterior for oiling purposes. If you do decide to take it apart, just remember, when you take a fragile and spindly race car and reduce its size 32 times, you get some really fragile and spindly bits. To avoid trashing the car, flip it upside down and support its weight – heel of your hand under the nose, and fingertips under the engine trumpets. That should give you all the support you need to loosen the five chassis screws, which are all mercifully accessible.

Once the screws are removed, the big mystery is how to separate the upper and lower halves of the car. The halves proved very difficult to separate, so caution was in order. Holding the nose in one hand, and pulling on the guide helped to separate the halves at the front end of the car, but the back end of the car was still clinging for dear life. A small, flat screwdriver inserted between upper and lower halves, then slowly worked down the length of the car did most of the job. Major caution: all four wheels and axle assemblies are mounted to the body, not the chassis! To separate the body and chassis, hold the guide with one hand and the nose with the other. Take your time here, or you’ll be selling a ‘slightly used but already broken car’ on eBay.

As is plain in the pictures, the chassis only functions to hold the motor and the guide. The axles and crown gear are held by the body. The implications for tuning may not be obvious at first glance, but if you loosen body screws to increase float, this allows the pinion and crown gear to move relative to each other. Odd setup, yeah, and potentially a problem, but that problem is fixed by choosing minimal body float.

Unfortunately, Scalextric drops the ball when it comes to their suspension detail. Sure, it looks great, but Scalextric uses these frail pieces as structural components. Spindly suspension detail has a way of breaking, especially on open-wheeled cars. On open-wheelers, the wheels hit obstacles during crashes, absorbing most of the impact energy. When this happens, all that energy is absorbed by the fragile suspension detail. When that detail breaks, the front axle is unable to stay in place, and the car becomes pretty much useless – that is, unless you buy the spare part (if it’s available). The spare part has the exact same weakness as the original, so if it happens once, it’s a fair bet it will happen again, in time. That’ll be another seven bucks, please. Scalextric has been aware of this design flaw for years, and has had alternative and inexpensive solutions available, but Scalextric continues to use variations of this weak setup on many of their open-wheeled cars. On the plus side, Scalextric has improved their design a bit, and the front end isn’t as vulnerable to torsional loads on the suspension, but it’s still susceptible to lateral loads. If you can find a good way to restrict the front axle from moving side to side (like axle collars), your front suspension will last much longer. The confines of the car’s nose make this difficult, so, pretty as the car may be, the Lotus 49b will see limited track time around here until that solution presents itself. For now, occasional glances at the Lotus and making a few vroom-vroom noises will have to suffice.

But before we break the car into little bits, we can at least see how she runs -- and run she does! On the wood track, the Lotus is sweet as can be. Not long ago, we’d hardly expect a car to come out of the box and run on a wood track smoothly. In the last five years, though, it seems the major manufacturers have figured out how to make a decent plastic wheel. As usual, Scalextric used their potent narrow can motor, and a good down-motoring might be in order for the no-mag crowd. Even with the excess power, you’ll be impressed with its smooth quickness, even before the tires are trued. For those of you who like your magnets on plastic tracks, you’ll jump for joy. The single button magnet is all this 52 gram car needs for rocket ship acceleration and quick direction changes.

If you like this genre, this Lotus 49b fits in the ‘must have’ category. To find any vintage GP cars this attractive, you’d typically have to spend much more money on custom resin builds. At about $50 US, you won’t find vintage GP cars any less expensively, either. Even with its (minimal) flaws, cars like this are the reason why so many of us get into slot cars in the first place. Cars like this belong in everyone’s collection, because some cars are just the best of their particular breed.

Maybe this car doesn’t belong on everyone’s ‘must have’ list, but it should be on everyone’s ‘must try’ list.

-Kurt