‘Miniature wrenches, fiddly di s and tyreshredding drifts’
If Zoom video conferencing is having a good pandemic (on the last day of January its share value was $76; by 26 June it was $257), Tamiya isn’t far behind. Since Covid-19 sent us all home, UK demand for the maker’s detailed and brilliantly executed kits has consistently matched the kind of rush it normally sees in the run-up to Christmas.
For readers of a certain age, Tamiya is synonymous with the radio-controlled buggies that exploded in popularity in the ’80s. Hornet. Monster Beetle. Grasshopper. If, as a pre-teen, you spent your time assembling little oil-filled dampers and launching your finished buggy from ramps of planks and bricks, those names are as familiar – as magical – as 959, Countach and Testarossa. And when you suddenly find yourself with a lot of leisure time (and some faintly depressing current affairs), what better escapism than diving back into a world of miniature wrenches, fiddly differentials and tyre-shredding drifts?
Obsessed with Tamiya from the moment I got my first catalogue, I’ve come to think of the model company as a kind of Honda twin. Both were founded in the aftermath of the Second World War: Tamiya in ’46 as a sawmill that diversified into wooden model kits; Honda in the same year as a maker of bicycles with bolt-on petrol engines. Both found their feet in the ’60s: Tamiya with a move to plastic kits; Honda via world-leading engineering, race success and an inspired move into the North American market with its motorcycles. Both had heydays in the ’80s: Tamiya with the radio-controlled buggy boom it helped create (the ’79 Sand Scorcher and Rough Rider are seen as landmark releases); Honda with cars like the CRX and NSX, its fine F1 engines of the period and a ramping-up of motorcycle production that saw it hit a cumulative total of 50 million units in 1984.
Both have used genius slogans: Tamiya’s ‘First in quality around the world’; Honda’s ‘You meet the nicest people on a Honda’. Both have long prioritised quality over a lightweight or cut-price approach. Both have dabbled in expensive, idiosyncratic and sometimes unsuccessful engineering solutions: Tamiya with its flawed Avante flagship; Honda with the slow-selling hybrid NSX and its perverse NR four-stroke and ‘upside-down’ two-stroke NSR 500cc Grand Prix motorcycles. Both owe much of their success to bold corporate identities and strong visual branding: Tamiya’s logo is a graphical masterpiece and its box lids and build manuals works of art in their own right (when Caterham overhauled its self-build manual, it looked to Tamiya’s instructions); Honda’s wing has graced every motorcycle it’s built since the late ’40s.
Pleasing, then, that my pandemic home ‘o¥ce’ (a draughty garage with no heating or windows) is home to an actual Honda and more distracting Tamiya Hondas than is ideal for peak productivity.
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