Kits seem to be all the rage at the moment. Ninco, Slot.It and Spirit have all released cars in kit form recently. Fly have jumped in with not just one, but a range of 12 kits. I've always liked the 'Vettes, and it's a Le Mans car, so I had to have one.

Labelled as 'Fast Kit' they come in a fairly flash-looking box, but no display case. All the parts necessary to build an operational slotcar are included.

What you get in the box - part-assembled chassis, motor and drive-shaft, complete interior and the body. 

Assembly of the chassis is quite straight forward. You need to remove the silver detail piece covering the rear axle, then you can fit the motor and drive-shaft. I added a couple of drops of glue to the motor mount, and glued all the bearings in place for extra security. The front stub axles were a bit loose and floppy, so I removed them and trimmed about 2mm off each to remove some of the free play. The crown gear is the old type (black plastic) and the gear mesh feels a little lumpy, but time will tell.

The interior detail was one of the major talking points when the Fly Corvette was first released a couple of years ago, and it's still one of the best around today. The level of detail is pretty stunning, but I'll let the pictures do the talking... 

Fitting the interior to the body is quite a fiddly job. The windscreen makes things tricky - it needs to be fitted to the interior tub first, and then it clips to the forward edge of the roof. It takes a little patience and trial and error to get it right. I also needed to lightly sand the rear edge of the bonnet where it meets the interior tub, to allow the tub to seat fully into position. A couple of dabs of PVA glue hold it all together.

As I said, it's a bit fiddly and you need to be patient, but it all goes together in a few minutes. The end result is a handsome beast, at least to my eyes.

The body is nicely detailed, especially the vent work at the front. One detail I've always liked with these cars is the way the duct on the roof connects to the tubing visible through the rear screen. Little things, I know, but quite impressive all the same.

The paintwork is good, as is most of the tampo-printing. My car has a couple of small scratches, but nothing major (or visible from more than a couple of inches). The numbers on the doors break up a little where the contour of the door changes, and the white isn't quite as solid and opaque as it could be. But these are very minor points, overall I would say that the car's appearance is somewhere between good and very good.

But it's a working slotcar not just a pretty model car, so let's get it on a track. 

Most Fly cars run fairly well on Scalextric Sport track, and the 'Vette is no exception. Speed is similar to Scalextric cars (same motor, same gearing) so they're fairly competitive straight away. The car was noisy at first, but that is improving with running. 

The C5R comes with a standard Fly bar magnet fitted. This isn't quite as wide as a Scalextric magnet, so it can 'let go' a little easier. There is a plastic shim under the magnet which can be easily removed to give a little more magnetic grip. Be careful if you do this, the magnet is held in place by a small clamp which fits onto two small posts on the chassis. These are small and easily broken.

With the shim in place the car has a nice balance between grip and slide-abilty. It will corner quickly, but through tighter corners you can easily push it into a controllable slide. Like most magnet cars, if you over-do it at speed then it's heading into the scenery.

On the routed track the Vette was initially hopeless! The tyres would not hook up and the car just span its wheels and slithered round the corners. I tried sanding the tyres but this doesn't seem to work well on Fly tyres, so I gave up and slapped on a pair of Slot.It P3s.

What a difference! The C5 took off like a rocket, handling the curves with grip and poise that it simply didn't have with the standard tyres. It's amazing the difference a change of tyre can make sometimes, and the P3s really work well on my track.

I expected the Corvette to be nose-heavy but it isn't really, the weight seems almost equal front and rear. So instead of the tail-happy beast I was expecting, it's actually quite nicely balanced and performs much better than I thought. The car can be pushed quite hard through the corners, even the downhill esses, and it copes well. It will slide nicely if pushed too far, but the guide travel is a bit limited, so if the car slides too wide the guide reaches its limit and can cause a de-slot.

I couldn't get any really competitive lap times because the track (and room!) were rather cold, so lap times were down by a second or more.  

I'm pleased with this one! The kit, although a little fiddly, was easy to put together. The finished car looks great and performance is better than I'd hoped.

These kits are selling for around £25 which I think is really good value. Grab 'em while you can! 

Bigger pics in the Gallery