Aristocraft Hi-tec cars... Samurai next of kin?

[wldnas]

Having just bought a Couple of MIB old stock Hi-tec Cras off Ebay recently, its come to my attention that the chassis on the aristocraft cars bear a striking resemblence to the Marui Sanurai?

of all the RC buggies in Marui history the Samurai must be unique in that the chassis used on that car was only used once. ann the other Marui cars re-used existing chassis designs as least twice, but the Samurai is the odd-man out in that its inovative, sophisticated and compex design would only grace a single RC car..... or so I thought?

I'd heard of these Hi-Tec cars before from old Magazine Adverts from the late 1980's they seemed to be basic toylike Buggys which showcased the then new Hi-tec radios and Electronic Speed Controllers, they sold a number of pugnation designs and were all named after animals, Kangaroo, Koala, Dolphin, Wilderbeast and such like, but they all shared the same design of chassis.

When my MIB Dolphin and Koala kits arrived the other day I noticed that the Chassis looked awfully familure, then it occured to me that they looked remarcably similar to the that of the Marui Samurai, so I got my Sammi out and compared it with the Dolphin (4WD) which was the closest of the two in terms of design and spec.

The Basic layout is the same, doublw wishbone front suspension and Trailing arm rear, with 3 Oils shocks, Mono on the front, indervidual on the rear, the Chassis is considerably different but shares common characteritics, open space frame, wide battery shelf, chunky front stock and bulkhead, similar front bumper fitting, the wheels two are attached using the same tapered cones with serated face as the Marui car. however the diferences and quite obvious for all to see. gone is the elegant and decreat front tortion bars instead there is a spring on the elogated top shock mounts over the body, the gear box although simlar is mounted at a different orientation, the chain drive is totally enclosed, gone is the 3rd adjustable diff, the rear shock are mounted horizontally ALA frog stylee and the Speed Controller is perched on a shelf over the rear gearbox and pokes through the roof!!! the steering servo has also changed orientation from the Horezontal to the vertical.

The build quailty is very "toy" like and the chassis is all over black plastic instead of the Sammis colour coordinated look, in running the thing, its quite similar to the Sammi, the transmission makes the same noises, its fairly slow when standard, and the steering is lazy.

on summary this car is I believe a direct decendant of the Samurai, but as with most licence made goods, its been suitably altered to look diferently and produced more cheaply than the Marui original, but the simularitys are irrifutable, so much that Im sure you couls easily fit Marui parts directly onto this distant cousin and effect a reasonable hop up in the process.

Its just a shame that this sad Chinese copy of a Great car is the final resting place of the Samurai design, one wonders why Marui dropped it in favour of the more conservative (and Successful Ninja) and so ended Maruis aspirations of invention. they are Citreon of the RC world, known for Quirky Inovation but sold out to produce conformist boxes just like everyone else. no wonder they turned to RC Godzilla's and Replica Firearms?

[oldfordguy]

Interesting to know. There have been a ton of samurai parts on ebay lately, and of course those low priced hitech cars. Do you think its possible to make a psudo samurai from those roots?

[wldnas]

Now that Ive compared the two cars closely, its appears that although the Aristocraft Hi-tec chassis shares a lot of characteristics with the Samurai, when you look closer there are a great number of diferences, the Hi-tec chassis is much simplified in nature, its also slightly longer and the gearbox although of a similar design is tilted back on its mountings to give it a different orientation to the Samurai, personally I wouldent recommend bodging up a Samurai using a Hi-tec Dolphin chassis as a basis, there are just too many differenses, if you keep you eyes out you can buy good quality used Samurais quite cheap, its just a question of being patient