Firstly, and most importantly a nice shallow chassis like the original Cougar and Cougar 2 (and Top Cat).
Secondly, belt transmission. Not that the gearbox wasn't okay on the Fireblade, I just think the belt is better. Less maintainence, more effcient and less noise.
Thirdly, front bulkhead being non-existent. One of the major weak points on all the 2wd Schumacher I have owned are the plastic bulkheads up front.
Jason,
Can't think of anything worse than a shallow alloy chassis.
The Cougar 1/2 chassis used to bend easily, especially after landing from big jumps. I can live without having to worry about whether my chassis is tweaked. If you must use alloy, the RC10 showed the way to go with it's combination of deeper sides & high quality material. Apart from tweaking, alloy looks old fashioned, gets marked easily, and compared to moulded plastic, allows less integration of features like battery retention, aerial posts etc. However I can't believe Schumacher would ever create a moulded chassis due to the tooling cost.
Belt drive = bad move. One of the reasons Schumacher went away from belt drive in 2WD is because of the increased drivetrain drag on the rear wheels. This gives a "handbrake" effect, lowering cornering speeds & making the car harder to control on variable grip surfaces & inconsistent to drive.
Can't agree more with your last point though. Schumacher used the plastic bulkheads to allow adjustable kick-up angle but the B4/X6 etc seem to get along just fine with a fixed kick-up.
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