Bear Hawk
Model Number: 58093
Released
28-May-91
Drive
2WD rear, gear differential
Suspension
Double wishbone all 4 corners, coilover friction shocks
Chassis Description
ABS Bathtub
Body Type
injection moulded styrene
Motor
540
Scale
1/10
Tamiya raided the parts bin for the Bear Hawk. Falcon chassis Tub, Manta Ray rear wheels/tyres and a modified Falcon gearbox case. A good beginners car, easy to maintain and improve. Tamiya have added a wing to the body and fitted it to the later Mad Fighter. (Description by acprc)
Reviews
Percymon
The Bear Hawk doesn't get a lot of love around the forums, or indeed eBay with low prices, but the reality is thats its not a bad buggy at all. The pogo stick shocks are certainly not the best and the narrow front tyres do nothing to help a tendency for understeer. Not such an issue for a starter kit or a buggy for children, but add a set of oil dampers, some more modern 2.2' buggy wheels and tyres and you get a great looking, low slung and racey looking buggy.
The components are well proven with the Blitzer Beetle and Falcon.
drop in a ESC, a sport tuned motor and you have a nice driver - lots of fun for bashing and general park duties.
Decal sets are nigh on impossible to find these days but the shell lends itself to lots of different non box art colour schemes and even looks good without any decals at all !
Overall, with some minor upgrades, the Bear Hawk is a great buggy - on par with the Blitzer Beetle for bashability. It might not have the Beetle looks, but the Beetle doesn't look like a racer IMO.
ukzz4iroc
Probably my most loved runner is my trusty Hawk. It's won me countless races on tarmac, today in freezing for and against Hornets, Grasshoppers, 4wd TL01's and a Baja King. As another member mentioned the standard shocks are awful and coupled with the dreadful speed disc tyres it understeers like an oil tanker.
I have put on Hi Caps on the front with serious tensioning and oil filled Super Hornet shocks on the rear. That along with the Carson semi-road tyres brings the handling up to anything else. It inherantly has a nice wide track so is very stable and with the motor slung out at the rear I now get some great oversteer- controllable too.
I run it fully ballraced with the standard 540 and with a good battery it really moves well. Mine is post apocalyptic (excuse the spelling) and looks great- seems to suit the car well. I think it looks great. Mine has been through so much and keeps coming back for more.
Twmaster
After purchase of a NIB body set for the Bearhawk I thought it would be neat to build one. Like many of Tamiya's cars trucks and buggies this too share some components from other models. For starters it has the Falcon's tub and the rear wheels from a Manta Ray. Other than that this was the father of a line of models still in production today in the Stadium Blitzer and Blitzer Beetle. Contruction of this model was vwery straight forward due to the care and quality of the excellent manuals. It took me about 3 hours to assemble the buggy with the exception of painting the body shell. The fit of most of the parts went well with the exception of the front and rear control arms which felt soft and just did not seem to want to go toghter all that well.
Although I was brought into the world quite a while before the 1991 release year! 
As others have pointed out the is not the best handling buggy to drive. the friction dampers are awful and the front tires do not grip well. Although I will say it is tough and goes quite fast on pavement. As for the looks, I painted mine 'Guards Red' and used the stock decal set. Without a wing the Bearhawk looks somehow odd from the rear. Otherwise it has a long lean look about it in my opinion. Installation of the radio gear was a bit complex as you mount the receiver under the speed controller plate. The wires to the resitor were also a problem as they are too short to get them to lay down in the tub (this can be seen in the Tamiya promo pic too).
One other nifty detail is this model was released on my Birthday. 28 May
Overall my impressions are that this is a bit better than the bottom end offerings of the Tamiya buggy line and is a genuine blast to play with. Well worth your time if you can find a nice one for your collection or a cheap one as a runner beater. The good news is that almost all of the running gear parts are still current.
J3cubfan
The Bearhawk is Tamiya’s 93rd release and is the epitome of Tamiya’s reusability of it components. I purchased this car from an auction on Ebay. I read some comments from users in this forum and decided to go for it. Here’s what I found.
Initial Findings.
Upon opening the car, I was amazed to find a hard plastic body. Yahoo! Long live hard plastic bodies. As with most of my cars I took this apart and cleaned it. I noticed it has the same chassis tub as the Falcon. In fact it even says Tamiya Falcon. I notice a ton of scratches on the bottom of the chassis. I first thought that the prior owner drove this thing over a bed of rock or something of the sort. The suspension parts look like those on the Falcon but probably share commonality with some other vehicle. The RS 540 had a rubber boot over the top of it. Certainly used to keep water and other debris out. I hooked 1.5-volt battery to the motor and the gears made an awful chatter. Not to bother, I disassembled the gearbox and cleaned out the grit out and added a small amount of gear grease and it running smoothly.
Driving this Guy…
I understand why the underside of the chassis was scratched up. Man, this thing has a low ground clearance. For a buggy, I think another inch would have sufficed. Keeping in mind that I don’t do hop-ups to my cars, I set for a test run. I installed my trusty Novak Explorer II and it was off we went. The turning on this has a lot to be desired. The small narrow wheels makes turning almost impossible at any respectable speed. Not good if you want to race…. I ran this car in grass, a mulch bed and on asphalt and I can truly say the asphalt is where it was the most satisfactory. The car struggled in grass and was bogged down in the mulch bed. I managed to find some intermediate type ramps and the car performed predictably without being too nose heavy or tail heavy.
Conclusions
I can see why there aren’t too many of these that come up for sale. I’ve given this to my 5-year-old to drive and he has a blast with it. Overall this is a good starter car but that is about as good as it gets…