The Carisma Subaru Impreza WRC and CEN 2023 M-Sport Ford Puma are relative newcomers to the 1/8 scale rally car scene, joining the previous king of the special stage, the HPI WR8.

After having these cars for a few months now, we thought it would be interesting to compare the speeds these cars can produce.

Were the results surprising? Let's take a look and find out.

So the cars that were used for the test are my collection of the Carisma Subaru Impreza WRC, CEN 2023 M-Sport Ford Puma, and the HPI WR8 Flux.

All these cars are 1/8th rally cars and while the CEN and HPI have the same wheelbase (300mm) the Carisma Subaru has a slightly longer wheelbase at 319.

It will be interesting to see if the slightly longer wheelbase will help keep the car stable on its high-speed runs. 

So first up was the special stage legend that is the HPI WR8. It was a little hard to keep control when the speed was getting high due to its gravel tyres, but the speed looked and felt quick, and it achieved a speed of 45 mph.

Next up was the new king of the stages, the CEN 2023 M-Sport Ford Puma Rally. This felt more stable at the high speeds (likely due to it running on the tarmac tyres that it comes out of the box compared to the WR8 Flux gravel tyres) and while it did look just as fast as the HPI WR8, it achieved a speed of 46 mph, just 1mph quicker than the HPI WR8.

Finally, it was the turn of the Carisma Subaru Impreza WRC. The upgraded motor and ESC, along with the slight adjustment on the pinion gear made a big difference to the speed of the car, it looked fast now! It was quite stable on power but as soon as you come off the power slightly it does get very very nervous. Either way, the top speed for the car was 40 mph. A fair bit more than the 17mph on its standard 2S spec out of the box!

Bear in mind the above speeds were of all three cars running a 3S 11.1v lipo battery, and while I could only use a 4S 14.8v lipo battery in the Subaru, I think it was only fair to do the test on the same battery power, and also save the stress on the Carisma Subaru Impreza WRC running gear too!

I'm pleased with the results of the speed test.

It gives a good reflection on the specs each car has, and one thing I think that would help the HPI WR8 Flux would be changing the gravel tyres over to a set of Tarmac wheels and tyres to give the car more grip and also have it sitting slightly lower to the ground. 

Either way, it was a fun test, and I’m going to keep using these cars for a while yet as they are all fun in their own way.