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GTodd

Remember when RC buggies/Truggies looked realistic?

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Man remember when RC looked somewhat realisitic?  This cab foward stuff has gotten out of hand.  The new Tekno 1/10 4wd truggy looks like a buggy, and its hideous.   Ill take a Kingcab or RC10 truggy anyday.  "They" need a realistic class again, and not just stadium trucks, Bring back the non cab fwd buggy and truggy!!!! These things are hideous!

 

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The chassis looks awesome, but I want to enjoy looking at it while Im driving it!!!!

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I agree, there aren't many new trucks or buggies that appeal to me.  I wish someone would make something with blackfoot/monster beetle proportions and scale appearance but with a strong chassis and gearbox and decent suspension.  Oh and it would have to be a kit, not RTR. 

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13 minutes ago, ThunderDragonCy said:

J Concepts are doing some of the old school RC10T bodies again aren't they? 

I almost bought one for the DT03T, but ended up going for the stock body

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I think the situation has occured, because the vintage models were based on real cars, nearly every one can be traced to the full size version, but now, i just think the designers are taking acid...:blink:

J

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The cab-foward, mid motor vehicles of today are absolutely hideous but they are also a product of the ridiculous tracks they run on. Racers would probably run something that looks like a toilet around a track if it meant a definite advantage in competition. But that's what happens when winning is the ultimate goal and function is over form. Remember when tires had spikes and you'd get some roost because an off-road track was,...well actually dirt. Everybody wants it to be a "fast" surface that maintain's consistency. They cry when track conditions change or degrade like the old true off-road tracks did. Well, to me, that's part of the challenge of off-road. Competition and the stories behind it are fun and fascinating but also leads to where we are now. I'm sorry, but that truggy is just plain silly looking. 

Honestly, for trucks, its been a long downhill slide since the RC10T came out. I thought it was awesome BITD, but now I can pinpoint it as the moment things drifted too far from realism. The King Cab and JR-XT's still had some semblance of being trucks. When the RC10T finally broke (Associated took their time to enter that market), the body got dropped down and the wheels just hung out the sides (the fronts were even skinnys at first).  Stadium trucks just got more and more removed from actual trucks. I'd hazard a guess that the realism Short Course offered helped bolster its popularity over the Stadium class when they first hit the scene. They looked like real trucks and you could run door to door without getting the wheels tangled up like the moon-buggy Stadium Trucks.

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7 hours ago, GTodd said:

Man remember when RC looked somewhat realisitic?  This cab foward stuff has gotten out of hand.  The new Tekno 1/10 4wd truggy looks like a buggy, and its hideous.   Ill take a Kingcab or RC10 truggy anyday.  "They" need a realistic class again, and not just stadium trucks, Bring back the non cab fwd buggy and truggy!!!! These things are hideous!

 

image.thumb.png.dae126812e0024e2a2b44e06eec57e2e.png

Wow this is ugly! Well at least with such hideous looks you can run it without worrying about ruining the aesthetics, as there's not much to ruin! 

That's got to be the most unappealing shell I've ever seen, I almost feel bad for it! An old transformers toy car would look more graceful

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8 hours ago, GTodd said:

Man remember when RC looked somewhat realisitic?  This cab foward stuff has gotten out of hand.  The new Tekno 1/10 4wd truggy looks like a buggy, and its hideous.   Ill take a Kingcab or RC10 truggy anyday.  "They" need a realistic class again, and not just stadium trucks, Bring back the non cab fwd buggy and truggy!!!! These things are hideous!

 

image.thumb.png.dae126812e0024e2a2b44e06eec57e2e.png

Looks like an anime monster, Pokemon (pocket monster)or somethn'

well i know i could modify any body to fit anything so no problems😉

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looks more realistic than the "Tamiya Frog" i think.

 

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This is a topic I’m very passionate about. Back in the mid eighties, I had a friend who was into serious slot racing (Blue King track). Once, he showed me some of the cars and though I was impressed by how technically refined they were, the bodies were basically just a wedge shaped piece of vacuum molded lexan, with enormous plates of lexan mounted on the sides (fold out by air resistance when running) and as a rear wing. The only way I could distinguish between the different bodies, were the lines for the cockpit windows or driver, which were virtually 2D. Already back then, there were similar if however vague tendencies in 1/12 RC track. Just a few years earlier, racers had a lot of different bodies to choose from and they picked what the liked the look of, simply because the influence of body shape was almost insignificant back then with the relatively crude chassis designs. By the mid eighties though, “everybody” used the Toj or very similar Osella body. With this in mind, I said to my friend that unless EFRA/ROAR/IFMAR ensure that the bodies have some realism, RC-bodies will eventually look like his slot car bodies.

 

Unfortunately, I was right. We’re not quite there yet, but the 1/12 and 1/8 track bodies have become extreme wedges with tiny flat cockpits and few details. And don’t get me started on the current buggy and truggy bodies! Even back in the early eighties, when we were using Schkee, Sorbello, Porsche 917K, 917/10, 936 and 956 bodies in 1/12 raing, many people who visited races, thought the cars looked unrealistic and were put off by that. I don’t know if more realistic bodies would recruit more people to the hobby now, but I feel pretty sure that potential RC’ers disapprove more of the current bodies than of the relatively realistic bodies of the past.

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Looks very much like the Kyosho MP10T. Hideous 

 

D7839E5C-B1BB-4B01-AD88-BDC3A1573C88.jpeg

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35 minutes ago, Mokei Kagaku said:

I don’t know if more realistic bodies would recruit more people to the hobby now, but I feel pretty sure that potential RC’ers disapprove more of the current bodies than of the relatively realistic bodies of the past

I would guess yes. I think part of the reason Short Course trucks got so popular so quick was from an influx of new blood. Those trucks looked much more realistic than Stadium trucks (which, at the time didn't even appear quite as ludicrous as they do today). It helped that the Traxxas Slash led the way since Traxxas is often the average person's gateway into RC. Traxxas got RC into places like auto parts store and full-sizes auto parts catalogs, etc. for greater exposure. While Short Course may have died, another realism-based segment popped up, the crawler/trail truck market, and its still popular today. Now that may be a bit apples to oranges as the entire concept of "competition" is different than Stadium/Buggy racing, but it is proof there is great interest in realism.

We know the race world of RC is a smaller piece of the pie. I think hardcore racers (and the industry creating such monstrous-looking things to compete with) get so secluded or perhaps insular that they are unaware of the importance of making RC racing palatable to newcomers to keep that part of the hobby going. RC should have learned more from the slot car example of the past. 

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I thought it was just my age being the reason I find these modern bodies horrible :P 

Like everything, at the sharp end of competition aesthetics are very much in the back seat compared to uncompromising performance. Just look at F1!

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2 hours ago, mtbkym01 said:

Looks very much like the Kyosho MP10T. Hideous 

 

D7839E5C-B1BB-4B01-AD88-BDC3A1573C88.jpeg

and people think the Aqroshot/Vajra body is ugly.... at least that has a semblance of truck bed etc....

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I managed to fairly easily mount a 275mm wheelbase proline ford monster truck body on my DT03 and that's quite long wheelbase. If you like proper trucks there are some awesome proline and j concepts monster truck bodies around and they would be the right kind of proportions 

Tamiya Junkies meet Robin Hood Raceway 22nd Feb 2020

 

 

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I agree, this propensity for ugly shells on pretty much any buggy/truggy these days is not only disheartening but also, to me at least, effectively cutting off a potentially large section of the market.  At least over where I live in the UK, there are very few RC tracks left open now, so the number of people looking to actively race, at a serious club level, as a proportion of the overall RC market, must surely be much lower than it was back in the 80/90's?  I mean I know RC in general, well cars & fixed wing at least, is much smaller than it was, but with new areas (and niche's within those) such as Crawling, Trail, Scale, Vintage (inc. ReRe) etc, there is no shortage of new and old  money pouring into the hobby.  And from where I'm sitting, reading about people's latest TRX4 or VS4-10, or watching some well supported YT channel singing the praises of collecting a full set of Astutes or Optima Mid's, a lot of that new money seems to be coming from more affluent buyers. People who hark back to the glory days of the RC of their youth, when they couldn't afford an Egress or Astute or Optima Mid...but can now, and not just one either...

I place myself in this group, had a Frog, Hornet etc in my youth, but hankered after the more exotic kits, well, now I can realistically afford those kits, but what choice is available for me at the quality end of the kit build market?  The ugly as sin, cab forward, low slung carpet racers...  Great...!!!  I'm not saying I have all the answers, because I don't, and I certainly don't envy the people trying to steer the remaining big RC companies on a safe and prosperous path, but surely they can see that there is a sizeable and profitable market for good looking / realistic yet well engineered kits, made from quality materials, that would look just as good on the shelf as they would throwing up roosters at the local BMX track? 

And what's more, whilst I realise that the key to enhanced speed for race trucks/buggies these days is to have a wide chassis front to back, motor forward etc etc, this doesn't totally preclude half decent aesthetics.  Hong Nor X1CR, AE RC8 anyone?  Proline Crowd Pleazer 2.0 body?  JConcepts Illusion body for Hyper 7? These were wide chassis race buggies that looked really nice IMO, not Astute or Mid nice, but not a million miles away.  So come on guys, it can be done!

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