"It was around 55 years ago that my father made a business trip to Japan, he'd seen Tamiya products in America and he arrived in Japan with an appointment to visit the current Mr Tamiya and his father. They sat in a meeting, and through a translator my father said, 'I'd like the distribution rights for your products for the whole of Europe.' They all looked at him completely dumbfounded. 'What's the issue?' he asked, and the translator replied, 'they don't think there's a demand for their products in Europe, they're not sure why you want the rights.'"
Half a century later and Pete Binger, MD of Tamiya's UK distributor, The Hobby Company, can safely say his father's instinct was correct. Having secured the deal he sought, he soon shocked Tamiya with the potential of foreign markets, helping to set the brand on course to become the global name it is today. Ahead of having a go at our very own Audi quattro Rallye A2 kit, PH spoke to Pete to find out a little about what makes the company, and its products, so unique.
"You actually learn something and understand the basic principles of how a car or a vehicle works," Pete says. "How to set up a differential, how to set up steering, how to get the track set up so you're not veering off to the left or right, how to build gearboxes, these are all experiences that you have when you build a Tamiya model. So it's educational, but it's a fun experience too because the engineering is of such high quality; if Tamiya says two parts go together they will, and they go together with precision. It's a real joyous experience to work through a model and to learn from it.
"We had Chris Harris come and visit us and I remember clearly him telling me that when he drove a Ferrari around a race track, if he felt something wrong at the back end in the diff he thought to himself, 'when I used to build my Tamiya diffs and I tightened them too much or I set them up wrong, I used to get this problem.' He could work out from his Tamiya experience what the issue was with the real car he was driving, you're never going to get that playing on a PlayStation."
With the promise of impending road testing mastery just a model kit away, then, I got to work. Before we begin, though, a disclaimer: This is certainly not a how-to guide, if it's advice on how to finish your own kit to perfection that you're looking for, then let me point you in the direction of this far more capable chap right now. Reasonably early on in my own build process I realised that I possessed neither all of the correct tools nor the necessary experience to truly get the most out of what is a fantastically in-depth product, and concluded that a significant increase in effort and outlay would yield only a marginal improvement in the end result.
With that in mind I endeavoured to make the build as fun (read, stress free) as the finished car would no doubt be. I was never wilfully sloppy or careless, but nor did I fret about a slightly wobbly cut here or a marginally asymmetrical sticker there. I imagine my outlook may have been somewhat different had I been personally required to part with the £200+ required to purchase the kit, electronics, controller and construction materials - and, even with the bar suitably lowered, I was no stranger to frustration, partly at the refusal of the kit's more fiddly elements to simply submit to my will, but largely at my inability to deftly persuade them to do so.
This though, I think, is a good thing. With a childhood's worth of Airfix kits and a more recent handful of Lego's advanced Technic builds under my belt, I'd imagine I came at the process from a similar level as your first-time average radio (it's never remote, that was the first lesson I learned) controlled car buyer. If you're more experienced, better equipped or bestowed with considerably greater reserves of patience, you will achieve even better results than you see here; if not, then you can at least know that a little perseverance should see you end up with a passable finished product. Either way, it's an undertaking which is as rewarding as it is intricate, and as educational as it is enjoyable - and that's before you've even driven the thing.
The first thing that hits me upon opening the box and poring over the hundreds of components for the first time is just how right Pete was about the quality. The precisely machined metal bearings and weighty matte plastics are clearly several steps up from anything I've built before. The instructions, with lines of Japanese text and dozens of detailed annotations, seem rather intimidating at first, but they quickly become clear and I soon find myself slotting together the driveshaft and assembling the gears in the front and rear diffs, greasing each component before I pop it in and seal it away forever. Everything fits together perfectly: "this'll be easy," I think to myself, unaware that I've already managed to go catastrophically awry.
"There is a drive to recreate the real subject as closely as possible when Tamiya goes about designing a new chassis," Pete tells me. "We've just had a new cross-country chassis, the CC-02, which is designed virtually in an identical manner to that of a real off-road chassis like a Mercedes G500. In that case, price is not a consideration for Tamiya, it's recreating the engineering realism of the real subject that they're focussed on... Often with bodyshells, the data is supplied by the real car manufacturer, such is the level of trust between Tamiya and various car manufacturers. With the new Toyota Supra, Tamiya and Toyota actually did a joint launch and the CAD/CAM data for the real car was supplied to Tamiya so they could produce the model and launch it alongside the real one."
It's exactly that commitment to detail which has caught me out and, as the end of the chassis build comes into view, I come to a terrible realisation. The bearings intended for the driveshaft and those meant for the wheels are fractionally different in size, just enough that to someone starting out on that very first step, the wheel ones look to be the right fit for the shaft. It's only once I try to pop one of the, marginally too big, shaft bearings into the wheel that I realise my error, a mistake which requires a great deal of time, swearing and fiddly open heart surgery on the Quattro to put right. All in all, the chassis goes together - foolish user error aside - relatively easily, though, and it's time to turn my attention to what turns out to be a far harder task: the bodyshell.
The kit may be testing the limits of my ability, but it's far from the most complex thing Tamiya makes. From entry-level children's models with simple instructions and more durable parts, right the way through to the pinnacle of RC racing, the Japanese company does it all. "We have Tamiya race categories at local club level in the UK and it goes right up to national championships and international race finals," Pete explains. "If you look at someone like Mercedes, they have a Formula One team which goes out and really shouts about technology and engineering excellence, and Tamiya does exactly the same. It has a racing division called the Tamiya Racing Factory and they develop cars which are largely made of carbon-fibre, titanium, aluminium, and they supply those to professional drivers around the world who actually go and race in national and world championships. Tamiya have been the world champions something like five years in a row.
"They're never going to sell a lot of these £1,000 carbon-fibre radio-controlled cars, but it creates a halo effect over the brand, shows credibility, engineering excellence and top performance. In exactly the same way as Mercedes, it projects that image across a range of products that goes from AMG cars down to a basic A-Class that your granny might want to buy."
Having already fallen short in my own attempts at engineering excellence, a little credibility is all I can hope for when it comes to the Quattro's exterior. Unlike the kit's mechanical components, however, which all come pre-formed to fit together perfectly, the shell is much more of a DIY proposition. The excess plastic must be cut away from the transparent moulding, mounting holes need to be drilled, multiple sections require masking off before painting can commence and the dozens of decals have to be painstakingly cut individually out of their sheet before being carefully affixed to the car. The opportunity for error is huge but the margins are tiny. I found myself exceeding them several times.
The car is painted from within, the clear plastic shell then serving to protect the finish in even the worst of crashes. To that end, the instructions call for the masking out of virtually the entire car to paint the grille - the only non-white section bar the windows - black. In the absence of black spray paint I sequestered a tin of Humbrol's finest, but painting it on ended up being just as tricky to apply as the masking tape would likely have been. The kitchen scissors I used to cut out the shell aided in my butchering of one of the door sills, and the 'window tint' spray can saw fit to explode on my final coat, covering the windscreen in unsightly blobs. These pitfalls were, just about, overcome by my stress-free philosophy - but its limits were truly tested by the decals.
Unlike the delicate water-activated transfers I'm used to, which can be slid over a surface into position, these more durable stickers are much more of a one-shot proposition. They also typically cover large areas including multiple angles and contours, making precision placement a real challenge. Preparing and applying them took longer than assembling the chassis, but once I got the hang of it and they started going on just so, the satisfaction was immense and it's fair to say I'm rather pleased with the end result.
Finishing touches include the option to fit the Quattro's built-in lights and rally spot lamps with LEDs, allowing them to illuminate and further adding to the kit's realism. These are a fun extra, above and beyond what I received in my standard kit, but look fairly straightforward to add in at a later date should I choose to do so. For aesthetic reasons I also chose to leave the aerial tucked inside the car rather than cutting the hole for it in the roof, yet am still able to drive it easily 40-50ft away, which I'd imagine is about as far as you'd want to let it stray anyway.
And so the car was complete, it isn't perfect under close inspection but from a few feet away - and especially while driving - it looks good enough to have elicited several compliments from socially-distanced passers-by. It's also provided a welcome distraction during lockdown, not only in the time spent building and driving it - about which there isn't a lot to say other than it's tremendously fun, obviously - but in rekindling childhood memories of a more carefree time.
As Pete tells it, I'm not the only one to have felt that way: "What we've seen over this past dreadful period when everyone's been locked away and unable to go out or do anything, is the way people have turned to the brand has just been absolutely incredible. People have such fond memories of working with it through their youth, they're sitting at home with nothing to do and they think 'I used to spend hours building Tamiya models, I think I'll get one' and they're reliving that sort of youthful experience. We've seen unprecedented levels of sales in the last few weeks and I think that says it all about the status and position of the brand, it really is so close to people's hearts."
In the age of smartphones, VR gaming and pocket-sized drones, a concept as time-worn as the RC car may seem to have had its day. As my experience with Tamiya has shown, however, there's no substitute for the satisfaction of getting hands-on with building something of your own. And despite a box which allows me to race nearly any car around nearly any circuit sitting beside my TV, zipping the Audi around the garden provides much more compelling entertainment. If being stuck at home is turning more people back on to Tamiya then that can only be a good thing; the knowledge gained and enjoyment to be had from building and driving this little car is sure to last through lockdown and well beyond.
Image credit: Dafydd Wood
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