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The Great Touring Class - Hobby Letter #8/21

28.2.2021

Hello everybody I hope you are rolling good! This week I try to keep it short and steady! Let's talk about on-road radio control and more spesifically Touring Class. What is it? Who is touring? Where can go and tour around? Touring Class in nutshell is a RC competition class where you drive on asphalt track that makes a tour to go around! It's not as old sport as one would think, pre 90's the only RC on-road classes were 1/12 sized Pan Cars driven on a carpet.

It's somehow funny idea that bullet fast on-road touring cars have actually evolved from dust snorting off-road buggies but history confirms this as true! An immortal legend and pioneer in it's own glory, Tamiya Hotshot released 1985 was the vanguard that paved the way for on-road touring class of today. As being the first budget priced shaft driven 4WD it was quickly modified to ride lower and suit RC rally bodies that were available. Rally was popular during the 80's - mainly thanks to dangerous but tempting Group-B - and it was only natural that the RC world followed with their builds now based to Tamiya Hotshot and other shaft driven off-road buggies. Four wheel driving in on-road surface with scale looking body slowly gained success and very soon the RC manufacturers followed along. Schumacher was one of the first with their Wildcat 1:10 Touring kit and Tamiya finally exploded the touring bank 1991 with their GT-Four Toyota Celica (TA-01 chassis).

From Shaft to Belt

It is not wrong to say that the whole RC 1:10 Touring Class was born with Tamiyas TA-01 Celica and it's many variants. Popularity was huge since beginning as these cars could be driven both in- and outdoors. It has been pure evolution since then but one important vehicle deserves to be highlighted here - HPI Racing RS4 what is still in market today! Now if a car was designed almost 25 years ago and is still competitive something has been done right.

Whats so special in HPI RS4 then huh? Belts. It was driven by belts. Back in the day it was revolutionary as it opened compeletely new worlds (even universes!) when it comes to fine tuning your powertrain. Compared to shaft drive the belt is way more accurate and has no "play" between the gears and shafts. Many still consider that RS4 was the first to start the modern ages of 1:10 RC Touring. Released just few weeks ago the HPI Racing RS4 Sport 3 BMW E30 1987 Warsteiner carries it's legacy with pride being the true pioneer in the class of On-Road Touring. Other notable pioneers of RC On-Road Touring that reserve to be mentioned here are Team Losi Street Weapon, Team Associated TC3 and Yokomo Mr4 TC.

Touring Today

Like most niches of RC, touring has also evolved to the levels unimaginable and is quite a jungle today. Belt drive is the standard today and most important players in the asphalt tracks are Xray, Destiny RC, Mugen Seiki, Awesomatix, Xpress and of course Tamiya. We can roughly divide todays touring cars to these main categories: Normal 1/10 Touring-class, smaller sized M-class - often called as Mini-class -, bigger scale 1/8 GT Touring and 1/10 GP Touring that is driven with combustion engine powered cars. What you need to remember here is that the "bigger" 1/10 scale is using 190mm wide bodies and the "smaller" M-class scale uses 160mm width of bodies. M-class heritages its name from Tamiya M-chassis what is still popular today. To make it more simple we need to separate Touring cars to Front Wheel Driven (FWD), Rear Wheel Driven (RWD) and Four Wheel Driven (4WD) subcategories. For beginner the most suitable option would be Front Wheel Driven car.

Electric 1/10 Touring cars and Nitro powered 1/10 Touring cars are all also completely different when it comes to chassis design so they are derived for a reason.

Drifting has evolved to its completely own type of sport from Touring cars and while the chassis platforms are different they often use same bodies and accessories.

Taking a Tour

Got interested? What is it needed then if one wants to try out some on-road racing? If you are a complete newbie for Touring - like I am - the touring experts of our shop recommend good old Tamiya TT-01 (or TT-02) for a starter. Tamiya kits are super fun to assemble and come with scale realistic body included. Xpress Execute is budget priced kit and very competitive option. Xpress has made a sweet kit that has everything you need to build a winning level Touring car chassis. Xpress Execute is available both in 1/10 size and in M-class size. Like often with kits, electronics or body are not included.

If you are a veteran of on-road racing you probably know your gear. This does not stop me to recommend you the winning platform of Xray T4'21 from our upper shelfs of professional RC's. Destiny RC is also making some top of the notch cutting edge Touring cars today.

Electronics used in sport of Touring tend to be on the faster side of rotations per minute. For beginner starting from indoor track a tad slower motor like 21.5T should be good. For outdoor setups choose faster 17.5T and below. Sensored motor technology is todays technology and are very much recommended here. Budget priced ESCs suitable could be Hobbywing Xerun 120A and for combo we recommend Hobbywing XR10 with Justock 21.5T motor.

Bodies On The Road

Body options are nowadays almost limitless. Here is our generous availability in this section but from the big world you are most probably able to find the exact body you are looking after. Just make sure that the wheelbase fits your chassis. Pictured above are 1/8 scaled GT Touring body and 1/10 scale normal sized Touring body. Quite a difference!

If I would be (and one day will be) building a Touring car it would be hard for me to pick a body. Now I am a nostalgic guy that cries easily so I could maybe be tempted by a legendary rally body like Renault 5 Turbo or perhaps the iconic Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia body would be The One. I also have a weak spot for Truck Racing and Tamiya is making some very very delicious bodies for that class like this Buggyra Fat Fox here.

To pack it up, it is nice to see how popular the Touring RC has become. Many subcategories and many classes for competition make it very tempting to jump along! Just remember that these cars are not really made for jumping big airs or crash hard against each other. Their powers are somewhere else than in bashing. But actually.. Please do that and get your spares from us at EuroRC! ;)


Members Rides Highlight! Steve's RC Photojournal send us this action shot! Not sure what this monstrous bashing weapon pictured here is but looks like it has all the elements that make fun bashing truck! Thanks for your photo Steve!

Please keep send your pictures and I may pick it to next week Members Rides! Simply reply to this email directly or send them to [email protected] or share them in our social medias Facebook or Instagram!

Looking for all kind of pictures here from all the niches of RC! Please send your photos we love them!

Yours truly and see you next week, Heikki from EuroRC

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