The regular cars (independently) of vendor are ok …at best, but not that fun as you want them to be. At least I want them to be as fast and as reliable as possible. I usually let my friend Stanislaw in Germany to bless my cars with his “Top Tuning”. After his tuning, the cars are killing machines. Absolutely fantastic. But maybe you want to do it yourself. So what can you do?

1. Put more power into the track. Which I discuss on this [page].
2. Replace the guides, depending on vendor. I generally use Frankenslot guides, for Carrera cars I use these. Frankenslot has guides for NSR-, Slot.it- and Scalextric cars for Carrera track as well). The Frankenslot guides for Scalextric car could be used on for example Sideways cars as well.
3. The engine is of course a major part of a fast car. Regular cars from the shop usually comes with motors of about 17 000 up to 21 000 rpms. So you need to replace them. Many competitions set the bar at 21 000 rpms. Slotdevil and NSR are motor vendors which I use a lot, that provides different engines and types. You could easily go with motors up to 50 000 rpms, but I personally prefer cars with motors of about 35 000 rpms.
4. Tyres. Yes the grip is important. You need softer tyres, you could go either rubber or sponge. Vendors like Ortmann, Frankenslot and Paul G i Canada, all have a wide range of tyres (made of i.e. Polyuretan/Natural rubber/Sponge etc).
5. Wheels. There are aluminium wheel sets that are awesome, some even “aero”. Maybe not faster, I really don’t know, but they look good!
6. Downforce. If (and only if you like and/or are allowed) to be heavy on downforce you could upgrade your magnets to a neodym type of magnet.
7. Pinions. Regular cars often come with plastic pinions. You need to replace them with aluminium or brass. Depending on you track and space in the body of the car, you might go as many teeth as possible on the pinion, so the acceleration is faster, but slightly lower on top speed.
8. Crowns. The pinion is mounted on the motor, the other half, the crown, is the actual gear that is mounted onto the axel of the wheels. On Anglewinder and Sidewinder setups you can go with brass or aluminium crowns. You only have one fixed gear in slot car racing, so choose wisely.