What does scalextric digital sets offer?

From 2004 Scalextric digital sets changed the way slot car racing is perceived. With the Toy of the Year awarded to Scalextric for their innovation, it brought slot car racing in to the modern era.

Over the years not much had changed in the world of slot car racing with constraints being the amount of track required if you wished to race more than two cars. This created a massive cost to whoever wished to do so and that's not accounting for the space, four or more lanes require a huge area to fit all the track down.

So what is Scalextric digital you may ask? Now Scalextric cars are fitted with digital plugs that are registered to the powerbase. This allows you to race up to six cars on two lanes creating fast action packed racing for all the family. There are clever lane changing sections of track and with a simple press of a button on the hand controller your car can swap lane at the sections of track that allow you to do so. The lane changing track is easiest to describe as like train points and the metal section moves to direct your car to the next lane. The lane changing sections of track are more expensive than the standard track but if you wanted racing for more than two people at once then the overall cost will be far lower than having to have two lots of track.  Scalextric state that lane change sections should be placed at about 1 seconds of driving time around your layout. This makes racing a constant excitement for the users of the track. Digital layouts work best as fast free flowing designs allowing overtaking excitement for the duration of the race.

There are many items that can be added to your Scalextric digital sets such as a lap counter which is electronic and is far more reliable than the old mechanical lap counter that you may have had when you were a kid. There is also a pit lane game that offers something a little different than the first person to complete a set amount of laps. The pit lane game gives you 3 seconds to enter the lit lane and when you stop on the pit box it will extinguish a light and the first person to remove all lights from their board is the winner. If you miss your call to the pits you will have an additional light added to your total. Late in 2009 they released the new Scalextric 6 lane powerbase c7060 with a huge amount of features such as running ghost cars, adjusting speeds of certain cars to even the racing, plus Lap times and counter. The 6 car powerbase will operate with the current 4 car transformer so no additional power unit will need to be purchased. The RRP of the item is £100 but we feel this is well spent as it will complete any digital track and give the user no end of features to play with.

Digital is the new way to go for slot car racing. If you are looking to purchase a Scalextric set for any reason we would suggest that you seriously look in to making the digital choice. As with any Hornby or Scalextric set Always try to spend as much as you can on the set as you will get far more for your money than buying a small set only to find that you will want to add to it soon after playing with the track. We have some customers whose children are as young as 4 who race on digital tracks. This may seem a little young children but over 6 years of age will have no problem enjoying the benefits of Scalextric digital cars.