Friends, it’s been a long week. That’s why I’m going to take this oddball drag race to a personal level instead of plugging in the typical 300-word brief about how cool we think this is. I know it's cool, because I grew up with a massive slot-car track that my father built in the basement – a holdover from his considerable investment into slot-car racing when it was big in the 1960s. As such, my youth consisted of hammering vintage Ford GT40s and Ferrari 250 GTOs in 1:25 scale around a cool four-lane track that even had a tunnel. That is, until Nintendo and Sega monopolized my free time.
Never Stop Playing, Never Grow Old:
Perhaps if I’d had a 30-meter straightaway outside on a big stretch of tarmac, the console wars wouldn’t have pulled me inside quite so much. Granted, I couldn’t have raced a scale-model Jaguar I-Pace against a real one, primarily because the GM EV1 was the chief only electric car in my younger years. But lining up a real Rosso Corsa GTO to my unbeatable slot racer would’ve been epic.
Gallery: Slot Car Vs Real Car Drag Race
As it stands, I’ll relive my racing youth vicariously through this Drivetribe clip and cheer for a slot-car victory. It won’t be easy, because the small Scalextric Jaguar isn’t up against a standard I-Pace. It’s the race-spec eTrophy driven by Jaguar’s Jack Lambert, who happens to be the lead engineer for the car. It’s gutted inside, and with 400 horsepower on tap, it can hit 60 mph in 4.5 seconds. By comparison, the slot car is considerably lighter and can easily nip the big Jag off the line. Sadly, its top speed is just 14 mph. Good thing this race is only 100 feet long.
Which car wins? The I-Pace wins, of course. Actually, I’ll claim a win on this video, because I’ve almost talked myself into building a new slot car track of my own. Now if I can only get Nick Mason to bring his GTO to South Dakota….
Source: Drivetribe via YouTube