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As I may have mentioned before? I like to go for the rarer cars if possible, as I like the challenge of seeking them out, sometime I get lucks and the cars I want just seem to fall into my sights without any real effort on my part to actively seek them out, this car is one such car, the Hirobo Hilux 44B

This is one of a series of 4 cars by Hirobo that use their early all belt drive 4WD chassis that goes under the code number of the 44B, the 4 cars in the 44B series were? The Rock’n City (Honda City), Rock’n Vega (Buggy), Lancia Rally (037 type) and the Hilux pickup, to be honest the Lancia Rally is probably the rarest of the 4 cars but I think the Hilux is more unusual in that it’s the only Hirobo car to be modelled after a Pick-up Truck and it’s also got a slightly different special Short Wheel Base chassis to the rest of the 44B cars, and that is the main reason why I went for this one many of the design elements (and some parts) from the 44B chassis went onto be used in the design of the later Hirobo 4WD cars the Zerda, Alien and Invader.

I had to have a 44B chassis car of some description as the 44B chassis is one of the earliest 4WD EP buggy’s to be produced by any mainstream RC manufacturer, in fact the first 44B cars came out in early 1984 nearly a year before Tamiya released their Hotshot, and the design and engineering of their cars is top notch, well this is no surprise when you look at the quality of the RC Helicopters that they are famous for making, their cars were ahead of their time, the all belt drive transmissions were a little quirky at first, but super smooth in operation, but as the other manufactures caught upto their lever of engineering excellence in the late eighties so their exclusive and somewhat expensive cars seemed to loose favour with the Car buying public and Hirobo eventually turned their back on the Car building and went onto concentrate their efforts into building their RC Helicopters, a market were they still dominate to this day.

Admittedly it’s sad that Hirobo turned their back on the RC car trade, but because they did, it has made their products quite desirable to oddball collectors such as myself, and I often search through the Hirobo items on Ebay just on the off chance that I might find something of interest, and that’s exactly how I found this Baby I had to bid against so pretty big names in Tamiya Club to get it, but I was eventually victorious and managed to win this MIB kit for a nice tidy sum when I arrived I checked it over and looked through the manual to familiarise myself with the kit, the first thing that strikes you is how short the chassis is, it’s titchy :S but comes ready assembled with the radio box, belt drive, and both front and rear gearboxes already installed.

The suspension is very similar to that on the Zerda and it has some very nice 3 piece wheels but it’s the body that is most bazaar? Like the chassis it’s slightly deformed, in that I mean its kinda short and fat, the level of detail is so-so for a lexan body, there are a number of plastic detailing parts that need to be fitted, but when compared to a Tamiya Hard body it’s no contest, the rear genius of these cars is in the chassis, but as this car is a MIB I had no great desire to built it straight away? I know that sorta goes against my principle of having all my cars built and runners, but I will do it eventually, but I want to be able to fit a brand new radio, and I’m in no great rush to go out and buy some right now, someday I will get around to building this truck but until then I’m quite contented to let it stay as a MIB with full knowledge that I own a MIB Hirobo Hilux 44B