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Pintopower

Ampro Project Lunchbox and Project Ted off to Tamiya America

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Last weekend, I attended Proline by the Fire in Apple Valley, CA, which is a scaler and crawler event. The event had hundreds of people there (ranging from 500-900, depending on who was asked) and as usual, I had the only Tamiya off roader. Sure there were a couple CC01’s on the rally stage but out of every single car there, I had the only High Lift and the only Bruiser (technically it was the P407). I am used to this disappointment but what I am not used to is seeing a Tamiya booth there! Surely they would have some beauties there like the ridiculously overpriced Mountain Rider or the Tundra, the F350, CR01 or even a selection of the scale bodies that Tamiya has created!

 

No

 

They had some rally cars.

 

Anyway, I have largely forgotten Tamiya as I am over them creating nonsense anymore but this time something happened. One of the Tamiya Reps came running over when they saw project Lunchbox.

 

“This! They need to see this! They need to make this!” Paraphrasing of course, I don’t have a photographic memory. Basically, he was explaining to me how Tamiya USA is begging Tamiya Japan to make something to enter the scaler market. Tamiya Japan simply has zero desire to take such a leap. As someone who has designed and overseen mass production of dozens of products, I am aware of the financial burden of an endeavor like this has on the company and I have seen some die with the launch of a misguided product. There is no room for Tamiya to make a mistake so the fear (I hope) that management has is valid though I do not think that fear is a problem. I strongly believe that it is a lack of desire. They are doing well in the domestic market and see no reason to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in R&D and manufacturing of something that is not popular in Japan. Never the less, the rep begged me to let him borrow Project Lunchbox and Project “why hasn’t Tamiya bothered to do this and why do I have to do everything”, also known as Project Ted, to take to Tamiya USA for a presentation to Japan. Personally, I think this will go nowhere but I am willing to try.

 

Good luck old friends, if anyone can remind Tamiya how its done, you two can.

 

Please, no questions here on how I made these cars as this section is not appropriate for that and I do not want this post moved. I will cover that on my youtube channel.

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Best of luck to you! Tamiya has a long history of inventing a category and then sitting back and ceding any future development to other manufacturers; it happened with monster trucks, touring cars, and scalers. And when they do try to follow other manufacturers, the results are usually less than impressive. But who knows, maybe just showing them "Here's what the crazy Americans are doing with your products" will inspire them a bit. Or at least get them thinking beyond the "Metallic Purple Edition Frog" or whatever is in the pipeline now.

And those are some amazing creations there. They deserve to be shown off, no matter what the outcome.

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3 minutes ago, markbt73 said:

Best of luck to you! Tamiya has a long history of inventing a category and then sitting back and ceding any future development to other manufacturers; it happened with monster trucks, touring cars, and scalers. And when they do try to follow other manufacturers, the results are usually less than impressive. But who knows, maybe just showing them "Here's what the crazy Americans are doing with your products" will inspire them a bit. Or at least get them thinking beyond the "Metallic Purple Edition Frog" or whatever is in the pipeline now.

And those are some amazing creations there. They deserve to be shown off, no matter what the outcome.

Yes, you are spot on. They created the scaler, the short course truck, the buggy and the touring car. Now they make the dancing rider (ok, i love that thing), the Dyna head, the comical series and of course, the ridiculous and pointless recolors. Its called paint people. Use it. All I know is that my Trailfinder 2 is the scale Hilux I always wanted any my Traxxas Bronco is a masterpiece on so many levels. That kinna makes me sad. 

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I watched this video last night and have to say that it's great that the Tamiya America rep is taking your vehicles to Japan. By chance, did they take any of your suspension arms as well? Also, was there any discussion about the ridiculous MAP pricing policy here in the states?

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Excellent opportunity there Pinto - congratulations!

I've mentioned it a couple of times now on recent threads, but [very much based on your MST chassis/Blackfoot build] I would love to see Tamiya come out with their own/similar 'heritage' chassis range* - a modular twin-rail design with various cross-members (for motors/gearboxes and suspension/body mounts) and wheelbase options, to suit their existing (and any new) range of scale hard-bodies - seems like an obvious thing to do to me?!

They could quite easily raid their existing parts bin for existing suspension/axles, and indeed it would be nice to see an IFS version of the twin-rail chassis too perhaps - using M series wishbones or similar.

*I call dibs on it being christened the HC-01 / 02 etc. ;o)

Let's hope they're inspired by what you and others have done with their bodies - and give us a kit-build platform chassis that is worthy!

Jenny x

 

 

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This is awesome @Pintopower! I already read about it on your socials but forgot to reply. It's amazing to see that TamiyaUSA sees the potential in your builds and understands how a lot of Tamiya fans outside of Japan feel. Although I don't expect much to happen, I really hope they pick it up in Japan and give us something new and useful that will last for the same amount of time the High-Lifts and CC01's have.

In the last few years in the RC drifting scene we've had a bit of a shift with big brands like Yokomo and Overdose coming over to Europe for events and really listening to the market, putting out survey's to the people attending and bringing over prototypes and the team mechanics/engineers. It's great to see they are taking our market seriously. Let's hope Tamiya can do the same.

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That's great, Alberto! I wish you the best of luck, and really hope the project will find its way to become part of the Tamiya history.

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