Recently I've re-ignited a passion for racing Tamiya mini 4WDs, which most kids aged between 7 to 12 years old did in the late 1980s here. A side-effect of my mid-life crisis was that I soon found myself browsing through Tamiya's catalog of remote control car kits.
As a kid, I wished I had a remote control car that I could race around the void deck or at East Coast Park. But those cars seemed so expensive back in the day that I never did get one.
I especially loved the look of their offroad buggies...there's just something nostalgic about them that brought me back to my childhood in the '80s. I mean, check out this ad:
Doesn't that grainy footage and the speaker's reassuring baritone just give you a warm feeling all over?
Tamiya's buggies were based on what's called the SRB (Special Racing Buggy) chassis, and were apparently only released from 1979 to 1982. The first SRB was the Rough Rider and the last was the Super Champ. This site has some useful info on the history of Tamiya's off-roaders.
These SRB kits still go for hundreds of bucks in the second-hand market. Fortunately, Tamiya has been re-releasing its old buggy kits with updated chassis and parts, so there's no better time to get started building one. When I found out that the 1982 Super Champ was about to be re-released in September as the "Fighting Buggy", I felt a strong urge to get it. Finding out that Banzai Hobby had a great deal for the kit sealed it!
The Fighting Buggy is my first RC kit and while I'm pretty excited at the prospect of building it, there's also some apprehension that I'll screw something up. (What if I scuff up the paint job or break a part??) I guess we all have to start from somewhere. Over the next few days, I'll be putting up photos of my work-in-progress. Hopefully at the end of it, I'll get to show a video of my buggy hurtling through the grass!
As a kid, I wished I had a remote control car that I could race around the void deck or at East Coast Park. But those cars seemed so expensive back in the day that I never did get one.
I especially loved the look of their offroad buggies...there's just something nostalgic about them that brought me back to my childhood in the '80s. I mean, check out this ad:
Doesn't that grainy footage and the speaker's reassuring baritone just give you a warm feeling all over?
Tamiya's buggies were based on what's called the SRB (Special Racing Buggy) chassis, and were apparently only released from 1979 to 1982. The first SRB was the Rough Rider and the last was the Super Champ. This site has some useful info on the history of Tamiya's off-roaders.
These SRB kits still go for hundreds of bucks in the second-hand market. Fortunately, Tamiya has been re-releasing its old buggy kits with updated chassis and parts, so there's no better time to get started building one. When I found out that the 1982 Super Champ was about to be re-released in September as the "Fighting Buggy", I felt a strong urge to get it. Finding out that Banzai Hobby had a great deal for the kit sealed it!
The Fighting Buggy is my first RC kit and while I'm pretty excited at the prospect of building it, there's also some apprehension that I'll screw something up. (What if I scuff up the paint job or break a part??) I guess we all have to start from somewhere. Over the next few days, I'll be putting up photos of my work-in-progress. Hopefully at the end of it, I'll get to show a video of my buggy hurtling through the grass!
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