[terry.sc]

Originally Posted by Welshy40

ok, when the great designer left schumacher to those pearly gates up there the company didnt find anyone capable of taking over his position, and it appears that they just copied and altered the wrong way to make it worse rather than better.

Who was that then? Cecil is still around, Phil Booth is still working with them and Phil Davies only left us in 2001, that covers the 80s design team.

They should find a designer capable, heck look at Kyosho, they now own Peak motors, Orion and Losi Junior

Schumachers designers are more than capable of designing great cars, look at the Rascal and Riot from their current line up. Just because they aren't race buggies doesn't mean they aren't well designed.

The XLS, Procat and Bosscat as well as the cougar were and still are superb designs and at the time state of the art, so what happened? Its like their designing team just stopped working and left. They were designing the best stuff and over night they stopped and started designing rubbish.

They started designing cars that didn't need an engineering degree to put together (remember getting a length of wire, two balls and a drawing and you had to make your own XLS anti roll bar?) and didn't need rebuilding every week. I always raced Kyosho back then as I couldn't be bothered doing so much work between meetings.

Yes the touring cars are good at the mo and the results are good but they need to make a stunning 4wd and 2wd buggy that doesnt have similarities from other manufacturers.
Kyosho can do it well, their 2wd is an upgrade from their last in 2002 (the Ultima type R) and the ZX5 4wd is well a copy of any shaft drive out there

...both very similar to other manufacturers?

but they did the ZX/ZXR/ZXRR/ZXS and those were a design that are still superb for belts.

With a transmission and chassis layout first seen on the XLS Modern chassis are better performers though due to better weight distribution and lower CoG.
The latest Predator looks remarkably similar to the original Pred, except they worked out that touring car style weight distribution doesn't work and went to saddle packs for better balance. Mounting the batteries at the rear of the chassis helps put more weight over the rear wheels for traction and it seems to work.
I have never thought putting the batteries down one side and trying to balance that weight by putting everything else on the other side was a great idea, but it was driven by JRMCAs rule in touring that only stick pack batteries could be used rather than any technical advantage. Works even less well in off road and the only thing that puts me off the ZX-5.

Also the previous Lazer won the Euros and nats in the hands of Ellis and Jamie so why go from really good design to a car that basically looks like something a beginner back yard racer would buy.

The Lazer ZX-R that won only one Euros in 92 had a pair of big money drivers using it. The Yokomo Dogfighter was the most successful car at the time so is it no wonder that the CAT 2000 was similar. Time has moved on and the Lazer design is 18 years old. The old cars are still a good club racer, like the CAT 2000, but they aren't going to win a national again.

If they do then maybe theyd get my custom, and hopefully much more business, and maybe another title.

I guess it would have to be a very special car to get your custom James.

The Lazer ZX-5 is a great car and excels at what it was designed to do. It might not win the worlds but it's a perfect club car for the majority of racers who can't afford a TRF501, BJ4 or BCX. Cars and spares are readily available and at a decent price. I suspect Kyosho will sell a lot more ZX-5s around the world than any other competition buggy (apart from Losi due to them having a 10 year head start!)

The problem for Kyoshos image is that it isn't going to be used by F1 drivers unless they either put together a race team or build a version with lots of shiny alloy and carbon bling bits with a price tag to match like all the others.

Look at the Ultima RB5, no one runs it because all the fast guys run B4s or XXX-CRs so everyone else does as well. As Stu has proved it is more than capable of winning but it's going to be a long time before you see many of them at nationals.