Quote:
Originally Posted by VincentVisser
When I went into modelsport yestersday there was a guy there that bought a rc car RTR for his I would guess about 7 year old daughter. He spent £100. The thing that struck me was the guy behind the counter. He never asked the guy what is it being used for and if she would want to race the car. Its was not a RTR that you would use in touring or nitro or 1/10th at all so technically if she wanted to take it to the next lvl and join a club they would not have the correct kit to start off with and would have waisted the £100 spent
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I would have to agree with Si, they have a car and so they do have the correct kit to start racing and haven't wasted any money. It's not as if they are going to be challenging for wins or planning on running at the nationals. You let them run and when they start managing to get around without hitting anything they usually then start looking at more appropriate cars and equipment, quite often second hand equipment from the top racers who now know them and give them a good deal.
We also have a member with a spare car or two, a basic car with a limited top speed that is lent on the night for a race or two to people who are interested, it usually gets them hooked and they go looking for a car themselves. Being an on road club the cars lent out are basic TT01s with an EZRun brushless running on a cheap 4 cell nimh pack. The slow speed makes them so easy to drive and having tested it at the track we can get 30 minutes running out of one battery charge.
Getting the shop to push particular cars onto customers isn't going to increase the new racers, it's just going to push them away from thinking about racing if they know they have to buy a different car to what they want to buy. It's only around 1 in every 50 drivers that even have a go at racing and I would be very surprised if any newbie buying a non racing car would even know about racing, what's more important for local clubs is whether there are posters or leaflets advertising them in the model shops.