The creme de la creme of vintage racers.

For years and years, Tamiya made hay while the sun shined brightly on the vintage RC boom, gleefully knocking out classic re-releases galore whilst other iconic manufacturers of the same era steadfastedly refused to join in. Who knows why, but maybe those others either dismissed the craze as a passing fad or perhaps thought the idea was a backwards step for the industry.

It seems though that a decade of relentless success for Tamiya has forced some of those same manufacturers to admit that they misjudged the situation, resulting in Kyosho finally getting on board with the re-release of the Scorpion, Beetle and Tomahawk over the last 12 months....and of course Associated Electrics a year before that with the re-introduction of the legendary original RC10 'gold pan' buggy.

And it seems that AE quickly developed an appetite for the re-releases as, within a few months after the Classic had hit the stores, they really dropped a bombshell by bringing back the Worlds Car, the 'hopped up to the max' version of the RC10. This buggy swept all before it in the early 1990s.

This kit probably represents the pinnacle of where vintage RC technology was developed to, when the use of metal was still a prominent feature of the chassis design. From then on the industry moved away from metal and it was largely plastic and carbon fibre that held sway in designers' thinking.

According to AE this re-release was not supposed to be a limited edition kit in the way that the Classic was. However they do seem to be in increasingly short supply at the moment. Whether this is due to the well known gearbox teething problems that became apparent in the kits...meaning they have decided to pull the plug...remains to be seen, but I didn't want to take the risk of missing out on this one as it is a very iconic figure in RC and a must have for the collection.