Quote:
Originally Posted by frogger
A smaller sized car that can be used at home and on the race track at a lower entry point and reconfigurable as pretty much any 'fad' body style type has way more global commercial sales potential.
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I hear you - the problem is that they compete against products of similar size but 1/4 of the price, that you can find a walmart and carrefour... Most non rc-ers have no idea what a propo radio is and don't understand why that 20cm car would cost EUR150 in a hobby shop while a "similar" car would fetch EUR40 at their local supermarket.
Additionnaly I believe that it costs marginally more money to manufacture a 10th scaler than an 18th scaler... But the manufacturers can charge a lot more money for it, behind "size impression". So, bigger scales (to some extent) = more profitable market = more push, and manuf'ers can't chase too many targets at once, especially these cash-constrained days.
I don't think small-scale cars have a sustainable future, certainly not when one can now get a 2.4G, brushless powered RTR AE B4 for a mere $220.
Paul
PS: not sure who said out-of-the-box cars can't be reliable and competitive... I run a box-stock FT B4, no breakage, and I win races with it. I run a box-stock (ok, there's a couple of eye-candy alloy bits on it) MBX-6 and I win races with it... I run a 100% box-stock xray T3, and, well, I don't win races with it as I'm not good enough in this very demanding class anymore, but I'm pretty darn close sometimes. None of these cars has suffered ANY reliability issues the past 12 months. Things ain't what they used to be any more, but in the right direction now
