Super Astute
Model Number: 58097
Released
27-Aug-91
Drive
2WD rear, gear differential
Suspension
Double Wishbone all round, coilover oilfilled shocks
Chassis Description
Fibreglass
Body Type
Lexan
Scale
1/10
27-Aug-91
2WD rear, gear differential
Double Wishbone all round, coilover oilfilled shocks
Fibreglass
Lexan
1/10
Reviews
Evoman
as you can read from the other reviews there were differences beween this and the astute. some points to offer up are as follows :
1 the gear box (TTC) runs on 0.5 tooth gears and not 64Dp and is the only RC car that runs this ratio.
2 the rear wishbones on the super astute give you a better angle to postion your shocks at but the front ones make it very tall and you need to put spacers in the shocks to get the best setting.
3 the small ballraces you needed on the astute to fully do the car is reduced from 36 to 16.
4 the car works alot better over race tracks with the TTC than the ball diff and with the one spur gear size the speed is impressive
To sum up, the car was a good and close copy of the jamie booth astute/madcap that showed the world that tamiya CAN make a good race car
Stevo309
The Astute was technically a very clever car with all aspects of the suspension geometry being adjustable. You could even adjust the rear wheel toe-in but this led to the car being over-engineered, over complicated and over-weight. I personally love the way the Astute looked and it drove very well, a neat touch was how you could drop the diff out of the bottom of the transmission housing through a special hatch. Overall a competent, good looking but over complicated car.. which leads us to the Super Astute...
The Super Astute from what I can see was a great attempt by Tamiya to address the shortcomings of the Astute. I'll start at the front and work my way forward to point out the differences between this car and it's earlier little brother. Starting with the front suspension, the wishbones have been thickened and the front anti-roll bar removed. The uprights have also been replaced with stronger white nylon items. The front bulkhead has also been reinforced to create more strength and rigidity. The configuration of the electrics is different with the battery now down the centre line of the car to create better handling and no manual speed controller is included in the kit. A motor is also excluded so the intentions are clear, this car was aimed fair and square at the high end of the market, a racer! Moving further back we find that the transmission now contains a planetary gear diff and slipper clutch instead of the Astute ball diff. This is neat and what Tamiya label the TTC system works very well but I don't understand why they chose to use 64dp fine pitch gearing which was not widely adopted on the 1/10 racing scene and didn't make provision for changing the spur gear to allow more ratios. The rear wishbones are also thicker and the rear hubs are now simple non-adjustable types. The front mounting edge of the rear wishbones has also been re-inforced with a metal strip. Cosmetically we see different decals, grey shockers and different wheels and tyres. I love the way this car looks although the decals are tough to get right!
Overall a super car, great handling, great looks and an improvement on the Astute where it was needed. A shame it wasn't adopted more widely on the racing scene, I think it just came along too late.