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THEcar is the product of one mans obsession. Finnish racer and designer, Joseph Quagraine promised his own 8th buggy for years but all his best efforts seemed to come to nothing. Despite his best efforts - the funding and vision of various manufacturers wasn't there to bring THEcar to fruition and many thought it'd never happen, 4 years of hard work however and THEcar is finally here..

JQ - as the man himself is known, set about finding the funding himself and after securing a large loan from the bank THEcar was on.

The car I have here is the limited edition car - not one you'd ordinarily be able to purchase unless you're lucky / know someone. Most differences are cosmetic. The shock towers on the regular car aren't covered in logos, the centre diff mount is black, there's no limited-edition number under the chassis, no extra GHEA pistons included and finally no limited-edition T-shirt.

So other than a few bits of 'bling' there's nothing to seperate this Limited Edition car from the regular car.

THEcar doesn't come with wheels and tyres - and nothing in the way of oils, lubes or tools. So the box is relatively small for an 8th scale buggy - you just get the bare essentials - a race buggy.

The manual for THEcar is low on words after a brief introduction that’s filled with comedy and mad-words.  
The first stage of the build is to assemble the ubiquitous ‘big bore’ dampers - or THESHOCKS as they’re interestingly referred to.  I think I might get sick of ‘the-everything’ by the time this review is finished but for now I appreciate JQ’s humour.


All the stages in the build are neatly bagged and tagged with all the hardware required.
Top cap and diaphram
Pistons attach with a nyloc nut to the black shock shafts.
Installing the seals in the bottom of the dampers

The shocks come packaged individually for either end of the car and come with one set of pistons per end.  The front end comes supplied with some nicely machined rounded pistons with 5 holes and 1.3mm drilling.  The rear shocks come with 1.4mm drilled pistons.  The limited edition car I have also comes with GHEA tapered versions of the same drilling/hole count piston for extra tuning / driver preference.  The tapered pistons I’ve personally never really driven before but those that have claim good things - with a faster rebound than compression if the taper is pointing downwards aiding the ride over rough terrain.   The GHEA pistons will be available seperately for anyone wanting to try them.

Fitting the plastic ball cup on the bottom of the dampers was hard work - the the hole is small.

The dampers are almost universally black in colour - from the bodies themselves to the matt-black paint on the springs and even black shafts.  The only real deviation from the darkness are the striking orange-anodised threaded ride height adjusters.

Assembling the dampers is nice and straight forward - with no surprises or crazy ideas that won’t work.  The top caps are two part with a plastic top mount that protrudes out from the alloy top cap.

The seals insert into the bottom of the shock bodies and are capped off with an alloy cap which is machined to grip onto the included rubber booties.

The bottom spring cups sit deep over the bottom rose joint which have a small notch moulded-in to prevent the spring cups from twisting - which should help prevent them getting knocked out of position in an impact.

The matt black springs front and rear give up no clues as to their weights - pure stealth.  But they look cool and finish the shocks nicely.


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