One thing I was amazed by was, when you'd drive the cars fast around the track, the spinners would still spin like crazy when you'd come to a quick stop.
All the cars feature Carrera's doubled up brushes. And a good guide that doesn't wobble.
All the cars have the E200 motor, it's hard to read the printing on the motor unless you pop it out of the chassis, since the printing is on the bottom of the can. Also the motor is a really tight snap fit, a nice snug "hold" on the motor, I love it, no slop here at all.
The Chargers and the Plymouth has rear motors (inline of course) but the GTO has a front motor. Despite this difference I didn't notice much difference in handling on my wood track. We'll see what Dr. Vanski thinks when he gets to do some fast laps on a plastic track.
Nice tampo printing on the rear of the black Custom Charger. Not much in the way of tampo printing on these cars, but what there is looks great. The depth of the paint is obvious, it's not just a thin coat of paint. This is something that I'm, frankly, really impressed with. So many company's use a fairly thin coat of paint for very large (or small for that matter) areas of printing, not these cars
Now more wheels than you'll want to see I'm sure...
The Mustang's are interesting. The yellow Mustang (which I'm assuming is the older design) has a completely different chassis from the new green Fast & Furious Mustang. They both have different chassis, different positions for the reversing switch, and since the green Mustang is the only one with lights, very different "guts".
Of all the cars the green Mustang is the only one with lights. The lights that Carrera uses are very bright and nice maybe a bit on the "cool" side as far as color temperature goes, but I much prefer them to any other company's lights.
And no they don't shine down on the track, or through the plastic BTW. Very nice. While I was looking over the cars, I realized they all had different license plates. Sure, of course real cars would, but I wasn't expecting that Carrera would bother to make each have their own identity.
Tons of details to take in here I know.
So I took the cars for a serious spin on my wood track...now hold on, hold on. I know they're meant to be at home on plastic track with the magnets holding them firmly down. But they worked quite well on my track. The tires, despite feeling quite hard, stuck surprisingly well. Laps were respectable, especially given that these are street cars and not "racing" cars.
On another, but related topic, the cars had great "track feel". They are all quite heavy cars (which probably made them stick well), and all have a nice smooth personality. They all have freely spinning axles, all have no mechanical issues that I can find. And when you pick them up they feel good, meaning that they are nice and solid feeling. Some cars have a light, thin, un-solid (for lack of a better description) feel to them. Not these cars.
All of these cars would be great cars to let kids bang around. In fact my wife Karen and 16-month-old son Tyler drove these cars around the track when I was at work today (sure technically Ty was sitting on her lap...). She loved the green Mustang (sorry Van) and she was impressed with how well the cars all drove. She's driven some of my other cars but has never been "taken" with any of them, but these cars...she liked 'em! Not bad, the wifey seal of approval!
So what's the verdict? You just can't go wrong here. You have nice models of popular cars, at a reasonable price...what's not to like?
DaveK
