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Badboy

Tamiya being slow and ignorant?

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Hi!

I was talking to Trail Jero (tc member) couple of days ago and we came to conclusion:

Tamiya Hi-lift got mount hole for 4 links but no hop ups!

Tamiya MFC-02 got more connectors than uses (rumore said a winch was on it's way) but no hop ups

Tamiya re-re the Bruicer/Mountaineer with new motor/tranny with new chassie mount but no indication of what for.

A lot of other companies releases new cool car (Axial/Traxxas/Rc4Wd etc) and Tamiya only more or less re-re old cars with

little improvement...

NOBODY (or hardly) use Tamiya for crawling they use Axial, RC4WD and cross builds axial chassie/Tamiya bodies...

There are probably more weird things that indicates that there was something to come but didn't

Why Tamiya? Why?

Badboy

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Tamiya seems to be working in a safety zone: Making kits that sells for sure. Maybe this as something to do with the Japanese economy.

When it comes to the re-release of the Bruiser, I was quite curious since the Bruiser had a tranny with mounting holes not used when mounted in the Bruiser (!) I was thinking "Whats next? Whoo"

And yes I see other rc companies releasing some great product like Axial. I have always seen Tamiya as the innovative company.

Tamiya are good at what they are doing, but lack innovation, I think. Still love the company, though. That will never go away.

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Tamiya was so ahead that made models that still sell after 30 years.
When someone said that Tamiya didn't win on the tracks, Tamiya made the TRF line and won many championships.
Tamiya is a giant and as every giant must calculate every step.
Other model companies are small and more dynamics for this reason but believe me, Tamiya is not ignorant and slow, simply has logics that often we don't understand. And this doesn't mean that it has no logics.
At the end there's a Tamiyaclub on the net, I don't know about an Associatedclub or a Losiclub. This means something.

Max

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I hear you guys and I'm still (almost) Tamiya user only! (I got a wraith)

Badboy

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Maybe Tamiya needs some new blood calling the shots.

I will say it has kept it promise to keep its products within reach to most young person, but with the average kit price, inclusive of motor, body, wheels and tires, for less than $150.00 there is only so much can be offered.

As its main target market is still Japan, crawlers seems to be out of place. The geography is not suited, where sedan and track running models are more appropriate.

Some/ most? of us grew up with Tamiya and we still have a place in our heart/wallet for Tamiya, but we have graduated to more design specfic models to meet our needs, hence more money too.

Since none of us sat in any of Tamiya marketing, product development, supplier, distributor etc...meetings, we can only be arm chair critics and speculate what T is up to. I can only say when Tamiya put out something I like whether is re re or new will get my money, otherwise companies like rc4wd, veterrar, axial, serpent, TRG, yokomo...have been getting my money and taking up my space.

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It's entirely possible that Tamiya designed these models with the idea that they would later release more hop-ups, but when they'd seen how the market went they decided it wasn't worth the cost of doing so. The Bruiser / Mounty tranny changes may have been made with a new model in mind or some new hop-up - and it may or may not come to release, depending on what their marketing decisions are. I guess it's cheaper for Tamiya to engineer the possibility in now and leave the door open for future products than to close it now and make a future product prohibitively expensive.

I didn't really see anything of the crawling scene since before the Hi-Lift release - was it Tamiya who turned it from a niche sideline into a growing area of RC? Or did they just happen to release the Hi-Lift at the right time? Either way, scale crawling has almost always been about custom building; who would buy an expensive Tamiya 4-link hop-up when you can build one from readily-available parts for very little money. Yes, I now other companies sell 4-link conversions, but do they sell enough for a company as big as Tamiya to think it's worth doing?

IMO Tamiya RC have been behind the times for a while and when it comes to tough, solid bashers they've still got a way to go, but I think they are listening and they are making improvements and I'd like to think they'll be around for a long time, still making detailed, gorgeous pickup bodies, still making realistic touring car shells, still making funky-looking buggies, still releasing new tractor trucks and still leading the RC racing world. If, among all that, they find a way to make a truggy or truck that can compete with Traxxas on speed, robustness and price yet still retain great Tamiya looks and kit-build format then that's all for the better :)

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