Slot Cars - Banpro Starter Cars

Here in Japan the slot car racing scene does not appear to be as big as in other countries.  A reason for this could be the real estate you need in your home to set up a track.  You need a lot of space!  Because the market is not so big, there are not a great deal of places to buy the track or the cars, and both have a price premium due to their limited imports.  Because of this I am always looking at alternatives...

Enter a Japanese company called Banpro.  They make wooden tracks on a large scale, some of which you can find in the Japanese toy store chain Hakuhinkan.  Recently in these stores besides the major brand names for slot cars, a cheaper version has appeared with the stores own name on them.

The cars come in a various colours, and at the time of writing, two body styles - Volkswagen Beetle and Mini Cooper.

The cars have a metal adjustable chassis and a durable vacuum formed body.

Slot car racers may see a similarity here for this chassis and that of the Plafit range of chassis parts.  There is a good reason for that, Banpro and Plafit are one and the same company, with Banpro focus being custom built tracks and Plafit being high quality chassis parts.

Banpro Online Shop

This cheaper car does not offer all the bells and whistles of the main Plafit line, but it does give you some flexibility.

For racing the car can be made very easy to drive with the 4 round adjustable magnets.  You can change the height on these to adjust how strongly the car will hold to the track.  Be careful and ensure on plastic tracks with raised rails such as Scalextric and Carrera that these do not actually touch the track.

You can also adjust the wheelbase from around 60mm, right up to 80mm, giving you a good variety of body styles this can be adapted for.

This car comes with a fairly hefty guide blade to keep it in the slot - it is after all I believe aimed at beginners.  You may want to trim this down or even swap out for a more regular size guide.  Standard slat car guide on left compared with the one provided.

The cars themselves race pretty good out of the box and make a nice durable little car for younger racers.  Just a personal preference, they come mounted quite high for the body, and I just rather see them sitting a little lower.  The white car below sitting at the out of the box height, blue car is after moving the mounting plates.

These sell for under $30 and so I think a really good deal to get a quality adjustable chassis for some project cars and kit bashing.  Recycled a broken LaFerrari into a convertible and used one of these chassis for this.