While it’s not the coolest car that you will have in your collection the Faster Than Ever Hot Tub will definitely be one of the faster cars you have.
While the thought of cruising down the boulevard sitting in a hot tub does have some appeal, the idea doesn’t conjure up feelings of speed. The FTE Hot Tub is fast though. The Hot Tub casting debuted in 2006 with two different wheel variations, five spoke and faster than ever. It is the Faster Than Ever version that we are featuring in this article. As we’ve discussed before, it’s not necessarily the Faster Than Ever Wheel that produces the speed but the nickel plated axle that helps reduce friction and produces a faster car. The Faster Than Ever version is typically much quicker than it’s 2006 counterpart with the 5 spoke wheels.
The Hot Tub is one of the heavier Faster Than Ever cars you’ll find coming in at 48g. It is mostly composed of metal with the only plastic being the hot tub in the middle of the car. There are a few Faster Than Ever cars that have a metal base, Hot Tub being one of them, but most had a plastic base. The extra weight of Hot Tub helps it keep its speed once it hits the flat run out and gravity has stopped working on it.
Hot Tub is a fairly wide car, relatively speaking, and this width helps it keep from bouncing around as much as say a skinnier car. Wider cars tend to run a bit straighter down the track, an If it does bounce from side to side its wide stance will help the bounces be much less vigorous so it will lose a lot less energy.
Hot Tub also has a decently long wheel base which also aids in helping it run straighter down the track. Remember that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The straighter a car runs, the shorter distance it covers, which in turn means faster.
Hot Tub has the four basics covered when it comes to speed. If you can find a car with good axles (FTE always helps in that department), good weight, fairly wide and fairly long, you’ll usually have a pretty good car. There are a few more things that you can hope for, one being weight distribution. Hot Tub is pretty good in this area too. What you hope for is a center of gravity (where all the weight acts like it is) that is low and farther towards the back than the front. Because of Hot Tub’s metal base and extra metal detail in the back its weight distribution is pretty good too.
While Hot Tub has pretty good weight, it’s not as heavy as some of the cars with more elite speed, but it is definitely no slouch. It will hold its own and quite often come out on top against most of the other cars that Mattel has to offer. Don’t let the silly looks scare you off, if you don’t have one you really should see if you can find one to add to your race collection.
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