AutoArt 1/24 Porsche 911 Cup cars-photo review

Photos of the new 1/24 AutoArt Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars. See the cars for sale here on AutoArt's website, links below.

The white GT3 release car link.

The black GT3 VIP Racing car.

For comparison I've included this shot showing the AutoArt 1/32 Porsche with the 1/24 car.

New 911 GT3 Cup car from Porsche!!!!!!!!!

ATLANTA – August 26, 2009 – Stronger, wider, faster – Porsche’s new 911 GT3 Cup car is the latest-edition of the world’s best-selling and most successful production-based race car of more than 1,400 units. It will be introduced at the Frankfurt Motor Show September 17-27, 2009, along side the previously-announced 2010 911 Turbo and 911 GT3 RS.

For the first time, the race car is based on the street-legal 2010 GT3 RS version. However, in keeping with tradition, it continues to be assembled on the same production line as all road-going Porsche 911 vehicles in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen.

Like the flat-six “Boxer” engine in the new GT3 RS, displacement is increased by 0.2 liters over the former model to 3.8 liters and produces 30 more horsepower – 450 hp with a maximum RPM of 8,500. Additionally, it comes with a standard, sequential six-speed manual gearbox and weighs 2,646 lbs (1,200 kg).

New Porsche 911 GT3 Cup Race Car To Debut In Frankfurt

Also like the 911 GT3 RS, the GT3 Cup car features the 1.73-inch wider body of the current 911 Carrera 4S, providing sufficient space for larger wheels. Wider front wheel arches allow for three-piece light-alloy rims measuring 9.5 J x 18 (previously 9 J x 18) utilizing 24/64-18 Michelin racing tires. The three-piece light-alloy wheels on the rear axle are up by one inch in width, now measuring 12 J x 18 with 27/68-18 tires.

The new 911 GT3 Cup is clearly recognizable at first sight through the special design of the front end. The striking daytime driving lights come straight from the current generation 911. Another carryover from the road-going 911 GT3 RS are the front body panels – as they prove aerodynamically-efficient for racing duty. The front spoiler lip is more than 0.5-inches lower to provide significantly more downforce on the front axle.

Downforce on the rear axle is also increased by the by virtue of a rear wing that is over 9-inches wider than the street version, 66.9 inches vs. 57.5 inches respectively. The rear air dam, with its air vent openings as well as the rear LED lights, also come straight from the road model.

Additional Unibal joints are featured on the track control arms and the front and rear anti-roll bars are now adjustable to seven different positions, allowing for an even more precise set-up of the car to best match each prospective race track.

The cockpit of the new 911 GT3 Cup caters even more to the specific needs of the driver. An additional vent in the upper part of the front lid, for example, provides the driver with a better supply of fresh air. The controls for the Info Display are now positioned directly on the steering wheel housing. And in addition to fore-and-aft adjustment, the steering wheel may now also be adjusted for height as on the regular production car.

News and photos used with permission from Porsche.

Spy shot supercar,Porsche 911 GT3 RS

The new GT3 RS with the coupe, cabrio, targa and turbo variants of the latest Porsche 911 already out on the road .This new monster GT3 RS was snapped in the French mountains area were it was testing alongside the current model.

There are a few cosmetic changes, in typical Zuffenhausen fashion.However,this supercar will retain its “GT3 RS” side decals, coloured wheels, decorative strip and side mirrors finished in contrasting paint.

To make this supercar more light,the new RS will include a polycarbonate rear window, and carbon fibre bonnet and rear wing.

Once again, the 3.6-litre flat-six, which it shares with the GT3, will be required to pound out 410hp. This will propel the car to 100 km/h in 4.2 seconds before it goes on to hit a top speed of 310 km/h.

All Fuched Up: BWA Porsche Wheel Inserts

As any of you who have seen my slot car collection or visited my Rennsport Reunion III Gallery can tell you: I like my Porsches. We've had the good fortune to have many models of these great German cars released as slot cars. The problem with many of these Porsche models is a problem that's common across the whole range of slot car manufacturers: wobbly eccentric wheels and bent axles.

If you're looking to upgrade the Porsches in your colletion then BWA Wheels are one likely source for replacement parts. These wheels come in different sizes and allow the slot car racing hobbyist to replace wheels from the narrowest ones used on vintage cars, to the monster rubber used on racing prototypes. What we haven't always had access to are the inserts necessary to finish off these great aftermarket wheels - until now.

BWA has augmented their range of inserts which has up until now included vintage Porsche steel wheel style inserts as well as 5 spoke alloy wheel style inserts with the Fuchs alloy inserts first used on the Porsche 911 model both for street and track use. All of these inserts fit the 32002, 32004, and 32006 wheels from BWA. With a bit of sanding and paint they look great and really finish off the look of any Porsche model slot cars as well as enhance their performance. The steel type wheels are great for Porsche 356, 904, 906, 550 spyder and other vintage machinery. The Fuchs inserts look great on the 911 series cars and have also been used on 904 and 356 series cars. The five spoke alloy inserts look great on 908s, 917s and the Carrera 911 RSR pictured. Between these three inserts just about the whole model range of older cars are covered. The BWA wheels and inserts are available from better slot car parts retailers as well as from BWA directly.

AutoArt's GT3RS and GT3R

Quite a nice pair of Porsche's have arrived from AutoArt and Global Gateway. I had two questions about these cars when I got them. The first question was how does this car stack up against the Scalextric 911 GT3 car in the looks and detail department? Let's get this out of the way first...the AutoArt blows the Scalex car out of the water. It's not even close. Everywhere you look on this car there are small details that grab your attention. Hood pins, photo etched grilles in the nose, a few nice little tampo printing's here and there.

But most importantly the lines of the model are much nicer. It's got more of that rounded look that Porsche-philes gravitate towards. The rear fenders are flared out nicely. I've always thought the Scalex car is a bit too "restrained" in its design. So a comparison is obviously in order. Now bear with me here... the only Scalextric GT3 Porsche I have is one pieced together from a kit and it was heavily raced in the Race Across America proxy race...with, shall we say, its share of battle scars.

A few side-by-side photos.




The second question I had was why isn't this a popular car, especially for kitbashers who want a plain white car to start with? The plain white body is the form that the real race teams get when they take delivery from Porsche. For reference I have some photos from the Flying Lizard Motorsports team taken for Slot Car News by Jennifer Hart, VP of team marketing when the Lizards got their brand new 911 (997) Porsches.



This car is sold in ready to race/decal/paint form directly from AutoArt.... and since the AutoArt car is around $5-10.00 cheaper than the Scalex car you've already got a bargain on your hands, especially since the Scalex plain white Scalex 911 is now just about impossible to find cheaply.

It's at more than 1/16th" wider than the Scalex Porsche, and comes in at 2-5/16" inches wide across the rear tires. And the white and red GT3RS is narrower at around 2-1/18" wide from sidewall to sidewall.


Both cars have different chassis. The GT3R (shown above) has the magnet mounted on the bottom of the chassis with a small screw. The design, however, doesn't seem to lend itself well to screwing out the screw to lower the magnet to get more downforce. Why? Well because the magnet is only held in the middle and if you unscrew it too much, the magnet may hang down too much on one side. The effect of the magnet mounted so low gives this car a great deal of magnetic downforce. The cars easily hang upside down on plastic track. The GT3RS (shown below) has two magnets, one behind the guide and one behind the rear axle.

The performance of these cars seems to be fairly different but this I think is due to the difference in width. The white and red car tended to lift out of the slot and rolled more easily than I expected. The GT3R (plain white car) handled corners well. Even though these cars are clearly made for plastic track I feel they'd adapt well to non-magnet application. The wider GT3R clearly has got tons of potential for racing on wood where Scalex car is basically a basketcase if you try to run it without magnets.

In the past some have mentioned the depth of the guide as a problem when trying to race this car without magnets or on wood. Well these cars are my first AutoArt cars to examine and here's a shocker... the guides are deeper than Fly guides (which are around 6mm deep) and standard Slot It guides (around 5.5mm deep)... the guide comes in at a robust depth of 7.5mm!

The white and red GT3RS is clearly not a race car (especially since there is a passenger in the front with brown skirt on and pink blouse). I can understand that many slotters aren't into street cars. While this is a street car it's a nicely done car and if you're into collecting every Porsche body, eventually you'll want to take a close look at picking this car up to add to the collection. There are nicely done silver and red wheels here and a well proportioned body. All in all a fine model...at a nice price.


I've focussed more on the aesthetic qualities of the cars because I see nothing to make me question the mechanical aspects of either car. If you're racing out of the box cars, you're racing with magnets. Both cars will work well in box stock form. If you're into wood tracks or non-magnet racing...well then you've got to be someone that likes to do some tuning to cars, I see plenty of potential here for that. Both cars have nice gear mesh and nicely done press on plastic gears. Both have sidewinder chassis. The tires on both cars I think are a bit narrow, but the stock rubber (even though not as wide as the Scalex car) sticks far better. In stock form these cars are fine slot cars and would be great additions to collections. The GT3R stands out to me as a car that's got to be at the top of a "must have" list if you're into modern Porsche racecars.

Now I've heard from more than a few retailers that they don't plan to stock either car. Hopefully this review will change a mind or two and some will go and ask for their sleeper race car. The price is right and the detail and performance are where they need to be.

And if all that blah, blah doesn't get you in the mood to go buy a Porsche...maybe this will help.


Dave Kennedy, Slot Car News

Photos of the Flying Lizard 997's are property of Flying Lizard Motorsports and are used here with permission, no reuse for any reason.

Fly Racing 911

The Fly Racing Rally 911 is a car destined to be a heavily raced slot car, especially for club and proxy racing. The body is thinner than the regular production Fly 911's.

Fly has done a great job modeling this car. The body seems to be in great proportion and in this version Fly have chosen to do the "ducktail" car first for the Racing version. The overall quality of this car is very good. There is no flash on the body, the wheels are very nicely done. They're plastic BTW, even though Fly calls them Strontium...
The tires and wheels on my version were concentric, and everything you could want in your ready to run car. The Oz Racing type of wheels on this vintage car is odd and I'd prefer the Fuchs wheels, lace BBS style, or Mini-lights wheels on the regular production 911/934's.

I'm not sure if Fly has done this on other Racing versions but on this 911 they've made the wheels removable and the 2.5mm axles have a flat spot on the end so that if you remove the wheels, you can push them back on again and THEY STAY PUT! This is great and this is something that every company should do if they put plastic wheels on cars.

"But... Dave", you say, "why did you remove the wheels if they were so good?" Well, 2 reasons:
1. The front wheels stuck out of the body and tiny bit, but they also would hit the wheel arch while cornering and slowed the car down.
And 2. and most importantly.... look at what happened less than a dozen laps into testing...

The 27-tooth stock crown gear totally disintegrated! At least half the teeth on the gear just broke off...very disappointing. The teeth on the 9-tooth stock pinion were fine.

Back to the rest of the car...

The chassis has a spring loaded motor pod that's adjustable by screwing 2 screws on the sides. This adjusts ride height. The car is equipped with red springs.


If you flip the chassis over you can see the new Rally 18k motor. The box says this motor is 22,000 rpm at 14.8 volts, but the motor says 18,000 rpm at 14 volts...odd to say the least.

The NC style, short-can motor is held firmly in place by this bracket that covers the nose of the motor.

So since this is a Racing edition of the 911 you'd hope that the parts are suitably thin, thus saving as much weight as possible...well how's this for thin?

The interior is paper thin plastic. And is so thin you can see through it even without holding it up to a light as I've done here. The glass is vacuum formed and exceedingly well done too.

At first my car ran well and very quietly for a few "get to know you" quickie laps on my small wood track. I did maybe 10 laps before heading out to work one day. And then I took the car to the East New York Raceway for serious testing. I got to do only 5 timed laps before the gears let go. In preparation for this possibility I brought some Slot It gears with me. I replaced the whole rear running gear with a Slot It axle, wheels, and Ortmann tires. The stock "Type D" tires worked very, very well on my wood track, but in the very low humidity of the ENYR the only tires that work well enough to get low lap times are the Ortmann's. But on plastic track the stock tires would work well and shouldn't have to be replaced. Another feature this car comes with is a small wrench for changing the gears! I applaud Fly for providing this standard on this model.

The car is well balanced and can be thrown around the track with abandon. It's relatively slow turning motor is an excellent choice for this car. This car is an excellent starting place for a serious racer, but because of the need to replace the gears, I would not suggest this model for the novice racer or first time buyer.

Well, I'm very, very grateful that Fly sent this car for me to test... many tests require that you look at the car from a box stock perspective. This car, being a Racing version, should be held to a higher standard. Especially since the retail price of these cars is somewhat higher than the average slot car. Many things are very right with this car, but the gears have to be addressed in my opinion.

Some numbers:
Body weight stock=82 grams

Speed on ENYR:
Stock tires around 6.9 seconds
ProSlot rubber tires also around 6.9 seconds
Jel Claws tires (after around 300 laps, tires sticky) 5.513 seconds
Ortmann tires for Fly classic hubs 5.35 seconds

Testing notes:
-Needs a bit of weight up front to hold down the sprung guide.

DaveK
Publisher, Slot Car News