Schumacher CAT XLS Masami

The very same winning car of the 1987 IFMAR Off Road Worlds Championship Masami Hirosaka from Japan using the Schumacher CAT XLS named 'Masami' as close to his replica anyone will ever get. The stage was set at the Romsey off road club which is approximately 3.5 hours from London UK. I had to at least get a few :) . I was just starting to get into the hobby back then so I didn't get get a chance to play around with this. I did however get to go up against revision versions of these in later year and I can see why they were very formidable. They are what we would consider at the time almost 'indestructible', especially their front ends. They designed the front end (Wishbones) with a bit of 'Give' in mind. Instead of a fixed/solid state, they recruited the use of some tough rubber bands that will hold the front wishbones in a near solid/fixed state but will give enough movement so the whole front end will give or flex back a little in order to save the car from breakage. I think they call it the 'Crash back' system?. This I'm sure, was the best ever belt drive system that was used at the biggest RC event, there were other manufacturers that also adopted the belt drive system like Yokomo & Kyosho ~ I think the MIP 4wd version of the RC10 was belt driven also. The same could be said about using Ball Diffs. Another Schumacher innovation was the use of 'one way' hubs, it basically lets the car coast in 2wd mode when there isn't any throttle applied to the transmission ~ the Yokomo version had more of a variety with their one way system but was a bit of an overkill me thinks. And what about those front hub carriers? they fascinated me to no end. The Brits sure has some of the best innovations to come out of their corner when it comes to 4wd 1/10th electric racing. Even till this day in the year 2021, they are the last company to incorporate belts in their system. I like that!!