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New guy
Hey, everyone. I'm a new guy here; just signed up specifically to chat about and keep tabs on this upcoming car. I have a Mini-Z that I've spent about 30 minutes playing with, total. Otherwise, I'm pretty much a 1:10 scale guy. I've got a Sprint 2 that my buddies at work and I race in the parking lot at lunch, and I've got a scaler built with a brass frame and Axial axles, trans, etc. Anyway, the point is that I'm a guy who didn't bother much with mini/micro scale RC at all, but this new car from HPI has got me extremely excited!
As I said, a few of us race during our lunch and break periods at work. I live near Seattle, so that only works for about 4 months out of the year. Once the rain starts the racing ends. So, we've been thinking about ways to move our hobby indoors during the Fall and Winter. I bought the Mini-Z, thinking it would be a solution. Unfortunately, it has some drawbacks that prevented it from catching on with the guys I race with (Mainly that 2.4Ghz is expensive to add, and neither of our local shops stock ANYTHING from Kyosho, so buying cars and parts is a pain). We considered the dNano, but it has the same problems (cost and parts availability). It also sucks that Kyosho only seems interested in making supercars and Japanese race cars, since I'm a big American muscle car fan.
It looks like the HPI car may solve the issues we have with the Kyosho products. Only $120 RTR *with* a 2.4Ghz transmitter. Made by HPI, so there's a fair chance that my LHS will actually carry some parts. And slot car bodies should be easy to interchange, so I can get Mustangs, Camaros, Challengers, etc. I've already placed a pre-order for three RTR sets, so I really hope they're not pushed out past September.
If these cars are even half as good as I hope they are, I think they could be really, really big. If they meet my expectations, I'm going to build a 4x12' track in my basement. It should be easy to get friends to buy into racing, since $120 is a whole lot easier to swallow than a dNano at $280+. And since we can race year-round indoors in a relatively small space, it makes it an easier hobby to justify than something that only really gets used a few months per year and takes up tons of shelf space the rest of the time. Heck, I can store three of these cars in less space than my crawler, and I can take them back and forth to work in the tank bag of my motorcycle!
I'm really looking forward to the release of this new car. Hopefully I'm not disappointed. Looking forward to hearing first impressions from anyone else who picks one up, since I don't have a whole lot to compare against.
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