Well, I FINALLY got my Traxxas 4-Tec 2.0 Ford GT the second week in July after pre-ordering in April.
I guess that is "normal" with new releases. And I guess Traxxas has to dole them out as they ramp production. But ok, it's here! YAY!
I gotta say, I think this is the prettiest and most sophisticated piece of lexan I've ever seen done! Whoever figured out how to do it deserves an award. Most RC car bodies are really pretty simple, right? Just a single lexan sheet vacu-formed over a single mold. Simple as a bowl. No way they could do that and get all the aero-work and body forms of the real Ford GT. So, they did it in THREE pieces: The rear fascia (complete with tail light lenses ready for lights), the lower main body, and the upper main body. The rear fascia is fastened to the lower body shell with a couple screws. The upper body that make up the windows and roof line back to the "wing" is apparently glued on. It's a real piece of art, and being a long time GT-40 fan, is the main reason I bought this car. It's just freaking GORGEOUS! Look at the pictures from Car and Driver, and look at this recreation in RC, and they are exact. The only things missing are the external mirrors. The only thing I thought sort of odd, was that since they did such a bang-up job on the rear fascia, why didn't they put real light buckets on the front?
I hate to say it, but it's mostly gonna be a shelf queen. It's just too damn pretty to get scuffed up. But I HAD to take it out for a test drive! Had to take it up to the school nearby to find enough room. And smooth enough asphalt. Our country roads are pretty rough. On smooth asphalt, it drives like a dream. Solid and stable, but, like the real GT, you can hang the tail out in a turn with a little throttle. Top speed with the stock 21T pinion is an entertaining but modest 27-30mph. It comes with a 25T pinion as well, so I may try that next time, but monitor motor temps. The motor response is healthy, as one might expect from a 550-sized brushed motor in the Titan 12T. But imagine a VXL system would really make this chassis shine.
About half way thru the battery, I realized I had TSM on, with the dial set at the 12 o'clock position. Huh! Sure didn't notice any "help" while driving. It was completely transparent. But I wanted to see what the car was like without the TSM, so I dialed the knob down to zero (about the 7 o'clock position). Holy cow! It suddenly got VERY challenging to drive the car in a straight line! What the hey? The car was now really "twitchy". I realized that I was driving it like I drive my off road cars, with a good deal of constant steering input. It isn't necessary. The car tracks straight all by itself. (Adjusting steering trim requires that you disable TSM, trim the steering, then re-enable TSM) But, the steering was just too active for my comfort level around all those curbs, so I dialed up the TSM to the 9 o'clock position, and that tamed the twitchy feeling. So it seems that the stock servo is more than adequate for the task. I suppose that the other way to tame the twitch would be to dial back the steering rate, but that would require programming the "multi-function knob" to be the D/R adjust, and that knob is used for adjusting TSM. I wish Traxxas would have included a knob for the steering rate, too. That way, those of you who don't like the idea of TSM could have easy steering rate adjustment w/o having to reprogram the remote. I guess I'm a bit of a luddite, as I don't own a smart phone, so the easy adjustments allowed by the Traxxas App via your iPhone are not available to me. And navigating thru a menu tree with only two buttons and a flashing LED is something I'm not excited about getting into. I'll happily use TSM, if only a little, thank you very much.
All in all, this is a very nice platform, IMO. The clip-less battery strap is cool. The chassis layout is clean and efficient. Yeah, all the camber and toe links are fixed, but the car seems really dialed in straight outta the box. Supposedly, they're going to offer turnbuckles for it eventually. That'd be cool.
As I said, I LOVE the look of the body, it's beautiful, I got a blue one. You can get red or grey. I sure hope Traxxas sells you-paint-'em body shells for the GT, so you can choose your own color scheme. I'd also like to see them issue a pre-painted Ford LeMans livery body. I'd buy that in a heartbeat! The wheel and tire package they put on the car is dead beautiful too. Exact replicas of the ones on the full-size car, complete with brake rotors and calipers. Very nicely done, Traxxas.