When I saw the HPI-Racing Buggy advertised on the internet I thought to myself “That looks fun”, so when they arrived here in Turkey I contacted my friends at Speedy Models who are the distributors for HPI here in Turkey and arranged for one to be sent to me.
When it arrived you don’t realise how small the car is until you see the box it comes in, so I started to open and see what was what.
Inside the box was a car decal set, warranty registration info and card, manual, black painted body, rear wing, car, controller and some small orange course markers. The added bonus is that the inside of the box that everything is attached to is also your first ramp.
All that you need to do to charge the car up is to turn of the transmitter and car and plug the transmitter cable (which is clipped into the top of the transmitter) to the side of the car (socket) and the red light comes on (transmitter) showing it is charging. The first charge took 20 minutes which I thought was very good, the charging system uses the transmitter batteries to charge the car so maybe not ideal but, there is an optional usb charger available as well as some other upgrades so if you do not like this method of charging you can purchase one of them separately.
Whilst the car was charging I decided to place the decals onto the car body and attach the wing. The wing is attached using double sided tape (included)so that took a few seconds to finish, the body is attached to the car using Velcro strip (included) I trimmed mine and used sideways instead of how it is shown in the manual as it blocks access to 2x screws if you don’t do it sideways, best way to do this is attach to the car itself then attach the body part of the Velcro to the car (when you have finished charging) and peel away the paper to uncover the glue, then just push the body on firmly and done.
So far so good now for the stickers, in the manual it shows you where they go as they are all numbered, the only part I had problems with was the roof decal as it is larger than it should be so does not fit very well but all the others were no problem.
The battery was now charged so time to bind the radio, this was also quick and easy turn on the transmitter, turn on the car and beep beep done.
Aligning the steering is achieved by looking under the car at the front there is a small slide, you can adjust left to right there. Not ideal but it worked. The throttle and brake can be adjusted on the rear of the transmitter by turning the round disk right or left.
I was running the RC Skool for the students on the same day so I showed them a video (see below) and then walked in with the car, the reaction was amazing they loved it and all had a go with it. We will now attempt to build the ramps from the templates that HPI provide on the website (Go here) as a club project, also a lot of the students will now buy the car so it was a great test and now we have an alternative project for them to do.
I was amazed with the steering as most small 1/32nd scale cars are always tricky to steer but this car due to its Real Steer Proportional Steering was very easy to control.
Upgrades:
There are some great spares available as well as upgrades, here are the upgrades on HPI’s website and also some pictures below.
OK now it is fun time see what it can do…..
Unboxing Gallery:
