What you most likely won’t see at the iHobby Expo next week.

Unfortunately fewer and fewer European Slot car manufacturers make the trip to the United States for the iHobby Expo in Chicago, preferring to attend shows such as Slotlandia which was recently held in Milan, Italy.

Here are some exciting highlights from Slotlandia.

NSR showed the first prototypes of their 1/32 Porsche 917K. Based on the samples shown in Milan, there will be 6 liveries early in 2009 including the “Gulf” #1 and #2 cars, Salzburg #23 and #24, David Piper #11 and a Team Wicky version.

BRM (who will be represented at iHobby by their North American importer) had previously announced their Toyota 88C Group C car in Minolta and AAR liveries, but in Milan also showed prototypes of the Mazda 787B IMSA (Charge), Sauber-Mercedes C9 (AEG) and Porsche 911 GT1/98 all in 1/24 scale.

Slot.It have apparently delayed their highly-anticipated version of the Ferrari F40 (initially to be available in “LeMans Test” and “Totip Lottery” liveries) and next decoration of the McLaren F1-GTR (Loctite) to first quarter 2009.

Slot.it instead will concentrate on the introduction of their new driver telemetry module that “broadcasts” lap times to a driver headset in real time and Slot.it’s Oxigen Digital control scheme which allows 20 cars to be raced at once on either Ninco or Scalextric digital tracks.

Written by Vincent Vega