New on the shelves
Tamiya’s take on the G-Class, plus new detailing range
Price: £249 Rating: ★★★★★ Contact: www.jadlamracingmodels.com
ELECTRIC cars are the latest in-thing, but Japanese firm Tamiya has built millions of them since the fifties – and they’re a tenth of the size of the one sitting on your drive. The brand’s remote-controlled models have been on kids’ wishlists for decades, and we tried out one of its latest kits, a recreation of the iconic Mercedes G 500.
This new Tamiya model costs £249, but you have to pay extra for a controllers and battery. It also needs a substantial investment in time to build, and a fair degree of skill. There are gearboxes, suspension and other intricate mechanical parts that need to be assembled.
In terms of difficulty, we found following the instructions was somewhere between assembling an IKEA wardrobe and using a Haynes manual. Get it right, though, and the result is a realistic working chassis.
Far trickier (and more time-consuming) is painting the body and painstakingly applying the stickers. These are very much a finishing touch and add nothing to the overall performance, but there’s no denying that they do make the kit look the part when it’s sitting on a shelf.
Once it’s finished, the G 500 is great fun to drive and surprisingly good on rough ground. You can even take it all apart again to change the gear ratios, swapping outright speed for rock-crawling ability.
We constructed it with a teenager, and enjoyed the family time of learning about the working of car together, as well as the eventual driving. It’s not cheap and it’s time-consuming, but it is easy to see how, for many, a Tamiya kit is a rite of passage.
“It needs a substantial investment in time to build, and some skill”
“The G 500 is great fun and surprisingly good on rough ground”