Bring the Toys! Kickass AWD R/C car race/drift video
Kyosho's Mini-Z series of RC cars is pretty neat. Measuring in at around 5 inches in length, the cars are exquisitely detailed, and as you'll see in the video after they jump, they go like stink. The embed is a long form commercial/promo that centers mainly on the Mini-Z AWD series. The pair of R34 Skylines you see duking it out on the track both sport the AWD chassis under their bodywork, and it's pretty awesome to see how well the cars handle when the remote's in the hands of someone who knows what he's doing. Even more impressive is when the "drivers" start drifting the cars at around the midway point. The drifts are deftly executed and it look great on video, and it leads directly to a second drift demo using the Mini-Z racers based on the cars from the Manga and Anime drift series, Initial D. Stay through the end to see a Countach LP400 and a Ferrari F430 tackle the miniature race course, too. We totally want one of these little cars, even though we're more likely to put it into the kitchen wall at the RC-car equivalent of 150 mph than we are to execute a successful drift.
Video after the jump.
[Source: YouTube]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
theface 9:22AM (7/14/2007)
Awesome! This brought back many memories of the radio shack x-mods cars we used to play with at work about 4 years ago. In stock configuration, with "aftermarket" lithium batteries, a hot rod motor, the cars had so much power, a 2wd configuration was useless - it was necessary to upgrade to the awd kit - And drift just like in this video. Tons of fun.
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geo.stewart 9:38AM (7/14/2007)
the mini-Zs up the ante quite a bit. I still have my 66Mustang X-mod and I've driven the mini-Zs quite a bit more handful because the speeds can get ridiculous.
epp_b 9:27AM (7/14/2007)
Haha, drifting R/C cars. Is there anything more Japanese than that?
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Phillip 12:24AM (7/15/2007)
speaking of xmods, their still around and lively. Mine hits roughly 30 mph, haha.
Read this if your interested, its all about 1/28 drifting: http://www.xmodworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=20456
The author of that is also in the midst of designing his own custom mini-z chassis, with drifting in-mind
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typhren 5:01AM (7/15/2007)
It helps to have solid drive axles. The open diffs that come with most RC cars make drifting kinda twichy, even with 4WD. The low-resolution electronics on the XMods don't help with control either. My Mini-Z is RWD so I haven't even bothered to attempt drifting in it, but both my 1/18 and 1/10's do just fine.
If only I had the space to build a track like that...
As for price, $150 on a Mini-Z kit seems pretty stiff, but you really get nearly the level of control that you get out of a 1/10 (though not the top speed, naturally) if your surface is good enough. On residential tarmac, I think only 1/10's can handle the roughness - my 1/18 is twichy like a SF tweaker even though it does 50mph...
schlomo 2:11PM (7/14/2007)
I dunno... Y16,500 seems a bit expensive to me for a 5in RC. I only paid about Y19,000 for my 97 WRC Impreza... granted, it's a Tamiya, but it's still fast as hell and handles incredibly well...
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Jared 2:13PM (7/14/2007)
This one is better and it came out in 04.
http://video.google.com/url?docid=5212129419554698728&esrc=sr2&ev=v&q=sg-drifters%2B3&srcurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideoplay%3Fdocid%3D5212129419554698728&vidurl=%2Fvideoplay%3Fdocid%3D5212129419554698728%26q%3Dsg-drifters%2B3%26total%3D13%26start%3D0%26num%3D10%26so%3D0%26type%3Dsearch%26plindex%3D1&usg=AL29H21009uL4FoSoG98V5P4TnMG_GsLOg
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James 3:36PM (7/14/2007)
These Mini-Z's are awesome... I haven't seen any of the 4wd's run in person but I have had the Overland, Monster, MR-01 and currently own a MR-02 thats decked out and their tons of fun.
For tons of information go to www.MiniZRacer.com
teknokracy 5:59PM (7/14/2007)
Nice, but go check out youtube and the 1/10 scale drift cars. They handle more like real cars and if you didn't see people's feet standing around the track, you would think it was actual cars drifting...
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tcbritt 8:24AM (7/16/2007)
check out this vid of some cool rc drifting, this is the first video of RC drifting i ever saw and it blew my mind, these guys really know what they are doing, the driving and the video are both excellent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vXeXGSWUx0
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