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Mokei Kagaku

VQS (2020) in Tamiya's pipeline.

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5 minutes ago, A-Baum said:

Probably will sell out.  Blows my mind the prices people are paying on TamiyaUSA website for kits because that's the last place that had them in stock and I guess folks are desperate.

Half the times they just keep releasing the same crap time after time. Hornet, Grasshoppers, frogs, lunch boxes, monster beetles and the like. 

The TT platform is rather basic. Only cars that I find appealing now are the Egress, TRF 2xx and TRF 5xx. Rest have died to death of being released so many times over. 

They could if they want to really put serious efforts again into the 1/10 buggy racing, sponsor some drivers and release their TRF series cars in both 4wd and 2wd. They could even do 1/8 buggy and offer both nitro and electric or take the fight to Armma’s Limitless and release a 1/5 scale high speed on road chassis.

 

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39 minutes ago, Avante2001R said:

Half the times they just keep releasing the same crap time after time. Hornet, Grasshoppers, frogs, lunch boxes, monster beetles and the like. 

The TT platform is rather basic. Only cars that I find appealing now are the Egress, TRF 2xx and TRF 5xx. Rest have died to death of being released so many times over. 

They could if they want to really put serious efforts again into the 1/10 buggy racing, sponsor some drivers and release their TRF series cars in both 4wd and 2wd. They could even do 1/8 buggy and offer both nitro and electric or take the fight to Armma’s Limitless and release a 1/5 scale high speed on road chassis.

 

Yeah but people love and keep buying the classics so I can see why they do it.  Their spare parts could use some real help.  But they have a pretty good niche doing what they are doing, but I would argue it can't really last that much longer.  How much of their business now is related to nostalgia?  That will run its course as folks get older and the generation of kids who had never heard of Tamiya get into their mid life and have no attachment to the classic Tamiya cars.

Would be nice if Tamiya got back into racing, but is there much money in that arena?  Would it have to sideline some re-res?  Not sure.  

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Good point they have been churning out these classics for the past 15 years or so and I’m sure all those who wanted the cars from their youth have done so already but now people are just buying multiples for the sake of it, I’m also guilty of that having bought multiple egress and avant variants in recent years. 

Agree about spares that is what they need to produce in abundance. 

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On 8/30/2020 at 9:36 AM, ruebiracer said:

Yes, but Tamico does and Prices between Tamico and Seidel are most of the time only 10€ different on new released kits. So that´s a nice indication.

It seems you and @Mokei Kagaku were bang on. 299 at Tamico.

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So just under 280 gbp to the door (UK), useful saving over Modelsport, but to be honest, even at 280 this is a bit rich for me, I see it more in the 200 to 230 bracket.

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Me and my lad were all for getting a vanquish until that price was given out. The car is just not worth that much money. We are opting for a turbo optima instead. Vanquish will just break something on its first run.  Absolute joke for that much money

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1 hour ago, slimleeroy said:

Me and my lad were all for getting a vanquish until that price was given out. The car is just not worth that much money. We are opting for a turbo optima instead. Vanquish will just break something on its first run.  Absolute joke for that much money

You mean £266?. That is the price at tamico. This car is an egress with plastic chassis and cvas. It’s bought to us in the middle of covid . They have prob spent Hundreds of thousands making the moulds . Hopefully it will be vintage style blister packaging. I can’t believe people are still complaining about the price. We are lucky to be getting this model finally .

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32 minutes ago, xray mark said:

You mean £266?. That is the price at tamico. This car is an egress with plastic chassis and cvas. It’s bought to us in the middle of covid . They have prob spent Hundreds of thousands making the moulds . Hopefully it will be vintage style blister packaging. I can’t believe people are still complaining about the price. We are lucky to be getting this model finally .

People are complaining because it is overpriced. No possible argument about that, it is what it is. It’s purely a shelf car, an expensive paper weight. It’s a quick cash grab by Tamiya. With that said, no one should take it personal, it’s just business. 

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5 hours ago, rwordenjr said:

People are complaining because it is overpriced. No possible argument about that,

I don't think so. Take a 100 Euro carbon chassis** out and replace it with a 30-40 Euro plastic one, take away the 100 Euro Hi-Cap dampers** and replace them with 40 Euro plastic CVA dampers, and you've saved 120 Euros over the price of an Egress when first released.

Seems about right to me.

 

**Guestimates based on Tamico's spares prices for a ball-park figure.

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14 minutes ago, Fuijo said:

I don't think so. Take a 100 Euro carbon chassis** out and replace it with a 30-40 Euro plastic one, take away the 100 Euro Hi-Cap dampers** and replace them with 40 Euro plastic CVA dampers, and you've saved 120 Euros over the price of an Egress when first released.

Seems about right to me.

 

**Guestimates based on Tamico's spares prices for a ball-park figure.

AMEN!. 

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19 minutes ago, Fuijo said:

I don't think so. Take a 100 Euro carbon chassis** out and replace it with a 30-40 Euro plastic one, take away the 100 Euro Hi-Cap dampers** and replace them with 40 Euro plastic CVA dampers, and you've saved 120 Euros over the price of an Egress when first released.

Seems about right to me.

 

**Guestimates based on Tamico's spares prices for a ball-park figure.

The Egress is overpriced too 😛

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5 hours ago, rwordenjr said:

People are complaining because it is overpriced. No possible argument about that, it is what it is. It’s purely a shelf car, an expensive paper weight. It’s a quick cash grab by Tamiya. With that said, no one should take it personal, it’s just business. 

I have to disagree with purely a shelf car. This is basically an Avante/ egress that you can actually thrash around without worrying about it falling apart.

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Just now, xray mark said:

I have to disagree with purely a shelf car. This is basically an Avante/ egress that you can actually thrash around without worrying about it falling apart.

Those cars are shelf cars too man. It’s all looks. You try to drive them like you would an Associated, Kyosho, or TLR and you’ll be searching for parts in minutes. 

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6 minutes ago, Fuijo said:

I don't think so. Take a 100 Euro carbon chassis** out and replace it with a 30-40 Euro plastic one, take away the 100 Euro Hi-Cap dampers** and replace them with 40 Euro plastic CVA dampers, and you've saved 120 Euros over the price of an Egress when first released.

Seems about right to me.

**Guestimates based on Tamico's spares prices for a ball-park figure.

Spare parts prices are generally much higher than the prices of the same parts in a kit. Or in other words, the total price of buying all the spare parts equal to the content of a kit, is much higher than the kit price. So the price difference between carbon chassis vs. plastic chassis and Hi-Caps vs. CVA's are significantly lower in a kit than as spare parts.

Also, the Vanquish was almost exactly 10% more expensive than the Terra Scorcher when originally released. For the re-res, it's about 50%. The VQS admittedly comes with uj's up front and probably full ball bearings, wich the Vanquish didn't come with, whereas both the original TS and re-re TS have them. That explains part of the higher price difference, but not by far 50% vs. 10%. Also, the CNC'ed motor mount of the re-re TS is most likely a bit more expensive to manufacture than the stamped motor mount of the original TS, thereby slightly reducing the cost difference of the re-re TS vs. the VQS.

No question, the VQS will probably sell well, but in my humble opinion, the high price simply can't be justified from a rational "value for money" point of view.  I reckon Tamiya has a valid reason, which is possibly caused by higher manufacturing cost (Covid-19 or whatever), so I can't imagine the high price is caused by greed only, because "the market will pay whatever price we charge". However, I bet the price would have been only 10-30% above the price of the re-re TS if the VQS had been released a year ago.

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5 minutes ago, rwordenjr said:

Those cars are shelf cars too man. It’s all looks. You try to drive them like you would an Associated, Kyosho, or TLR and you’ll be searching for parts in minutes. 

With respect I think you are missing  the point of  a lot of us buying vintage tamiyas. No one expects to keep up with the race cars. 

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1 minute ago, xray mark said:

With respect I think you are missing  the point of  a lot of us buying vintage tamiyas. No one expects to keep up with the race cars. 

No, I get it. I buy some cars for that reason too. But I can also admit when it’s overpriced. It doesn’t mean I won’t get it, it just means I’m objectively looking at the situation and think it’s overpriced for what it is. That’s capitalism though, it’s just business. 

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1 hour ago, xray mark said:

With respect I think you are missing  the point of  a lot of us buying vintage tamiyas. No one expects to keep up with the race cars. 

Yes, we can´t keep up with the modern stuff. But last year I had the best RC time since years, when I visited on a Sunday the Tamiya Euro raceway, that was already prepared for the annual Fighter cup finals. Me and my little nephew drove some of my cars on and offroad, but highlight for me was my Vanquish in restoration. we took some videos, but I´m not a cutting videos guy, so please apologize the quality. Just wanted to share it with some Vanquish fans on TC. Also orry for my bad driving, was the first time on a real buggy track since the 90´s and car was not tested before.;) But it was soo much fun!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlMJPVZiEiE&lc=Ugzsj-vG6VnxeCR5t6N4AaABAg

Maybe some of you like it. The only fail was, that Evert got a bit tired and fell out of the roof after some more laps.:lol:

 

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And sorry for the looks, that was the mule state, it was just testing some components for the final restoration stage!:lol:;)

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6 minutes ago, ruebiracer said:

Maybe some of you like it. The only fail was, that Evert got a bit tired and fell out of the roof after some more laps.:lol:

Not tired! Paralyzed as he heard the price of the VQS. :P

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2 hours ago, rwordenjr said:

The Egress is overpriced too

Again I don't think so. If you buy one of the very first batch then you'll pay top money. If you buy from the second or third batch when Tamico has 10 or more in stock and most people who want one already have one, then I bet they'll drop

to around 260 Euros or so. Just as the Egress dropped from 430 to 330.

I don't see comparisons with Kyosho as relevant. Apples and oranges.

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2 hours ago, xray mark said:

AMEN!. 

 

2 hours ago, Fuijo said:

I don't think so. Take a 100 Euro carbon chassis** out and replace it with a 30-40 Euro plastic one, take away the 100 Euro Hi-Cap dampers** and replace them with 40 Euro plastic CVA dampers, and you've saved 120 Euros over the price of an Egress when first released.

Seems about right to me.

 

**Guestimates based on Tamico's spares prices for a ball-park figure.

100 euros here 50 euros there, chassis posts and other little bits and you are at Egress money or more. Don’t forget it’s just recently the Egress has become inflated by scalpers. They were around £350-400 max.

this VQS is too expensive should be £220 ish and max I don’t care what anyone says I’m not convinced and I won’t be no matter how people try to sugar coat it. As said above this was a cash grab by Tamiya from all those who keep bending over to pay insane prices on eBay.. Tamiya have seen this and want to join in the fun.

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5 minutes ago, Avante2001R said:

this VQS is too expensive should be £220 ish and max I don’t care what anyone says I’m not convinced and I won’t be no matter how people try to sugar coat it. As said above this was a cash grab by Tamiya from all those who keep bending over to pay insane prices on eBay.

I'm not trying to sugar coat anything, and unless you have pretty hard evidence of this then it sounds like tinfoil-hattery to me, sorry.

 

2 hours ago, Mokei Kagaku said:

Spare parts prices are generally much higher than the prices of the same parts in a kit. Or in other words, the total price of buying all the spare parts equal to the content of a kit, is much higher than the kit price.

Yes, I think everyone knows this, but I'm not privvy to the trade prices so have no idea what the markup is. But there is also the driver figure, and whether you approve of a pre-finished body or not, that's also saved at least one tin of paint,

masking tape, abrasive paper knife blades, PC body cleaner etc. I bet it adds up to the cost of producing the kits plus the usual mark up.

I don't think you can really compare the cost of the original kits with the rereleases. The parts are mostly slightly different, so it is logical that the production processes will also be slightly different, and I would imagine the labour costs are also different.

I think it only makes sense to compare rere kits with each other.

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1 hour ago, Fuijo said:

But there is also the driver figure, and whether you approve of a pre-finished body or not, that's also saved at least one tin of paint,

Good point! I simply forgot the painted body. On other Tamiya models, that typically adds 10-20 GBP/USD/EUR to the suggested retail prices compared to the same kit with unpainted body (eg. VW T1, G6-01 or CC-02 prepainted vs. unpainted kits).   So, to be positive, let's say that 20.00 can be subtracted from the price of the VQS.

1 hour ago, Fuijo said:

I don't think you can really compare the cost of the original kits with the rereleases. The parts are mostly slightly different, so it is logical that the production processes will also be slightly different, and I would imagine the labour costs are also different.

I think it only makes sense to compare rere kits with each other.

I'm not comparing the prices or cost of the original kits with the re-releases (so I agree on that!:)). I'm considering the relative price differences between the originals releases and compare them to the relative price differences between the re-releases.

Until the VQS, the percentage differences in prices of the original releases correlated relatively well with the the percentage differences in prices of the re-releases and the estimating the prices of announced (but not priced) re-releases was generally pretty easy;

"when original kit A was priced 30% above original kit B, the re-re of kit A is roughly priced 30% above re-re of kit B."

The correlation of course varies somewhat depending on which kits you compare, but I don't think the correlation has been even remotely as poor for any re-res as it is for the VQS, even when considering cost/value-adding changes to the different re-res.

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How was the original Vanquish priced in comparison to the other cars in it's chassis family - what did it cost in proportion to an Avante or Egress?

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