The 997 is the latest version of the venerable Porsche 911 and seems to be a popular car amongst the slotcar manufacturers. So far AutoArt, Carrera and Ninco have both released several versions and Scalextric are planning several. And now we have this model from SCX.

If you think this car looks familiar, you're probably right. It's exactly the same livery as AutoArt released several months ago. Why do the manufacturers keep duplicating each other's efforts?

But whatever the reasoning behind it, SCX's 997 is a nice model. The body is neat and crisp and nicely detailed, and without any visible moulding lines. The overall shape looks good and there are some nice detail touches like the clips securing bonnet and engine cover. Fit and finish is good, the windows, lights etc all fit perfectly and feel secure. The mirrors are solidly mounted and feel strong enough to survive knocks and tumbles. The rear wing is solidly mounted and will flex to absorb impacts. The paint doesn't flex as much as the wing, so it may crack even though the wing is still in one piece.

The paint finish is very good except for the black-painted rear wing supports where the paint isn't as smooth. The paint covering the rest of the car is smooth, even and blemish-free. The tampo-printing is very good, sharp and clear and legible and even printing across shut-lines without gaps (Fly, take note!). 

The car has a nice stance but there's a definite gap between the tyres and wheel arches, not something you'd normally see on a racing Porsche!

The interior is a shallow tray, painted white except for the dashboard. There's plenty of surface detail plus the usual roll cage and fire extinguisher. The driver is present from mid-chest up, painted mainly white with a red safety harness. The interior isn't as detailed as we've seen on some cars but there's certainly enough to give a sense of realism.

The body and chassis are held together by 5 screws - two at the front, two in the middle and one at the back. I discarded the middle two as unnecessary. The chassis looks familiar but as we'll see in a minute, there are some important differences too.

Let's start at the front. The guide is a standard SCX clip in guide, reasonably deep and fitted with the usual doubled over braids. Power is delivered via metal strips. A small circuit board is positioned just in front of the motor pod. This contains the connection points for the light circuit and presumably sort of voltage reduction / overload protection. The rest of the lighting circuit is housed in the body. The front wheels turn on independent stub axles. The way these are mounted allows a small amount of wheel travel but not enough to let the tyres hit the bodywork.

The motor is an RX42B, which now seems to be the standard for 2WD cars. It drives the rear axle via a metal pinion and nylon crown gear. The rear axle runs in snug-fitting metal bushings. The motor, axle and (adjustable) magnet are all housed in a detachable pod.

The pod is similar to those used in other cars but the way it attaches to the main chassis is different. Previous pods had one mounting peg front and rear so the pod pivoted, but sometimes the pod could pivot too much allowing the tyres to hit the wheel arches. The 997's pod has two mounting pegs at the front and two at the rear. This means the pod floats rather than pivots, allowing it more freedom of movement. The pegs fit into slots in the chassis and the length of the slots controls the amount of possible movement, so again there isn't enough travel for the tyres to hit the body.

It looks like a good system, one which should allow a lot of flexibility while minimising the risk of tyres rubbing on wheel arches. Talking of tyres, the Porsche's tyres appear to be a new, softer compound. They needed sanding because there was a definite lip on the edge of each tyre but now the tyres are trued they seem to work well on both my Scalextric and routed tracks.

As mentioned earlier, the Porsche has front and rear lights. These look effective and light bleed is fairly minimal. Some previous SCX cars have had light circuits stop working after a few laps, especially when running on Scalextric tracks (Scalextric use a higher voltage system) but I'm pleased to say the 997 still has all its lights working after a couple of hundred laps.

SCX cars are often noisy at first but the Porsche is quiet and smooth straight out of the box. It was a little slow at first but after a few laps and a few drops of oil it soon picked up speed. 

On my little Scalextric track the 997 feels quick and confident, especially with the magnet lowered a little bit. The Porsche is a relatively tall, narrow car but it handles well, even pushing the tail wide in nice controllable drifts from time to time. Of course high speed mishaps will almost inevitably result in the car heading for the scenery and the occasional roll. The 997 dealt with it all and came through unscathed.

On the bigger routed track the little Porsche feels quite composed. It's not going to win on outright speed but it should be very competitive against Scalextric and similar cars. 

The new pod seems to work well - the car corners very well and deals with the occasional lumps and bumps without problems. Although the pod moves quite freely the car doesn't hop when accelerating, it puts the power down smoothly.

The 997 is a nice car to drive, quick enough to be fun, with good brakes and tidy handling. On faster laps the car drifts smoothly and remains totally controllable. If you make a mistake the tail will swing round but it's usually predictable and most of the time the car recovers quickly. It can get a little untidy if you're pushing hard, the car starts to feel a little twitchy. I think this is due to its narrow track and light weight so I may experiment with a little weight and see if this helps.

Overall it's a fun car to drive, one that I'm sure will get a lot of use in the future.

The 997 is a nice model, well made and well finished. Performance is good and it's nice to see that SCX are developing their chassis design too. Prices, in the UK at least, are very competitive - SCX are usually 10-15% cheaper than Scalextric cars.

I'm quite impressed with this little Porsche. To be honest I almost didn't buy one because of the duplicate livery but I'm glad I changed my mind.