[Chrislong]

About 1985 my uncle bought me a Tandy RC car, it wouldn't go much faster than i could walk and the controls were no proportional, might aswell just be a switch. This was the toy I played with all the time, i used to drive it around the house following it, and id make parking spaces out of shoes or garages out of boxes to reverse it into. LOL.

Then about 1987 a different uncle who used to race 1/12 pancars (might not have been) decided to get rid of his racing gear, so he put stuff together to make a working car and gave it to me. It had a 540 motor but a label on it (faster?) sponge tyres covered in silicon which were attached to tubes, and could slide on and off the wheels, spur gear on the wheel and no differential. wedge shaped shell with open cockpit... at a later date I realised it looked very mardave-ish as the chassis looked vaguely like a ministock chassis (it wasn;t tho). With this id just go as fast as I could past myself, do a U-turn and go back, and only on smooth carparks.

Then in 1989 my dad bought me a Tamiya Suburu Brat. This was awesome, as I could now go on any surface, jump and drive over things. I put the gold wheels on from a monster beetle, and put internal limiters in the shocks (without them it was so high that it would roll if I turned sharp). I raced/street bashed this against my friend who had the Vanquish, he discovered Bury Model Shop Buggy Club and his dad took us both to a race meeting. He never went again after his first visit, but I kept going weekly from then on with my dad with the same truck for a few months, til I got a Lazer ZX for Christmas or birthday (can't remember).