The number and type of injection molded styrene bodies currently available from Tomy, Mattel and Life-Like is rather limited. Aside from the new Cobra Daytona Coupes and Chaparral 2Ds released recently by Tomy, and the announcement of a Ford GT40 body shell scheduled for delivery in late 2007, very little is happening in new body designs.

The high cost of the tooling required to produce a new body style severely restricts most of the manufacturers from doing much more than offering different paint schemes on an existing body type.

It can easily cost over $30,000 to produce a single new body mold for plastic injection molding machinery. This high cost when coupled with licensing rights and marketing campaigns all but eliminates most new products from ever being produced.

An alternative method of producing slot car bodies was developed in the 1960's to counter the high cost of injection molding. The process involved a low cost mold and a vacuum forming press.

Along with offering an economical means of producing new bodies quickly, the process itself, and the materials used, yielded a much lighter weight body that was also much less prone to breaking or cracking than styrene bodies.

Early vacuum forming used Polybutyrate sheets, but when General Electric introduced Lexan® in the mid-1960's most manufacturers quickly adopted this new plastic material due to its strength, light weight and crystal-clear appearance.

Today vacuum formed Lexan® HO slot car bodies sell for only a few dollars. This low cost and wide selection of body styles to choose from comes at a cost though - you have to trim, paint and decorate the body yourself.

Painting a vacuum formed Lexan® body is not difficult, but it requires special paint formulated specifically for Lexan. Radio-Controlled R/C cars normally have Lexan® body shells, so any good hobby shop selling R/C equipment will also carry Lexan® paint in jars and spray cans.

A Lexan® body is painted on the inside not on the outside like a styrene body would be. Because Lexan® is clear, the paint shows through and in the process hides all brush marks. This fact makes it almost impossible to paint a Lexan® body poorly. Decals or stickers are then applied to the outside of the body as usual.

I stock and sell a wide variety of Lexan® body shells in most of the more popular racing series, along with some nice vintage sportscars. I do not however sell Lexan® paint, due to US Postal regulations regarding paint shipped through the mails.

I sell this trick BSRT Lexan Body Mounting Fixture shown on the right. This tool makes it quite easy to trim a Lexan body for mounting on any HO slot car chassis.

You can also cut and trim a Lexan body by hand using a small pair of curved finger nail scissors.

The mounting fixture is nice though because it also allows you to properly radius the front wheel openings.

The list below includes all of the Lexan body shells I currently stock and sell. Each is molded in 0.010" GE Lexan® material. These body shells come unpainted (clear) and must be trimmed to fit your particular HO chassis.

Lexan® bodies can be fitted to all Aurora A/FX, G+Plus, Tomy AFX, Tyco, Life-Like and BSRT rolling chassis. They can also be used with the smaller Aurora and Johnny Lightning/Auto World Thunderjet 500 chassis if wider rear hubs and tires are used.

Lexan® bodies are most easily fitted to a chassis using a Velcro Body Mounting Kit, or with BSRT Body Posts & Pins, also listed below in the Mounting Supplies section.

Along with the Lexan bodies listed above, I also stock a complete line of Lexan Body Mounting Kits, supplies and tools.

A Velcro Body Mounting Kit is the fastest and easiest way to mount a Lexan body on any HO chassis. One kit contains enough material to mount two (2) bodies.

The second method of Lexan body mounting uses small hollow tubes attached to the sides of the chassis, and small pins which fit through the sides of the body itself and then press into these tubes.

Holes must be drilled in the sides of the chassis first, and then either plastic tubes are glued in place, or threaded aluminum tubes are screwed into the holes you've drilled.


The picture on the right shows these body mounting tubes mounted on a BSRT G-Jet Chassis. The new BSRT G3 Chassis comes with these body mounting post holes pre-drilled for you!