Tamiya Subaru Brat

I think the next car I came in contact with after the Grasshopper was a Tamiya Subaru Brat, sometime in 1989, I think. This was basically the same as the Tamiya Frog, only with different tires and body.

My Mom wanted to get an R/C car, so she got this used from somebody. She used it for a while, but not much. My brothers and a few other friends used it more frequently than she did. After a number of years with my Grasshopper--probably sometime between 1990 and '91--I took over the Brat.

Performance And Such

I used it completely stock for a few years, but never got much enjoyment out of it. It wasn't too fast, didn't look too cool (I was never a fan of the Brat) and didn't handle well.

In the end, this car got totally destroyed. Pieces broke, things didn't work quite right... I ended up half replacing and half scratch-rebuilding this car. It became some kind of monster truck that actually worked pretty well. (Much better handling and faster than the original car, anyway.) I sold the remnants of the Brat on eBay in early 2003.

In addition to the Subaru Brat, there are a lot of other cars that use this same chassis. As I mentioned, the Frog (which was the first with the chassis, I think)--strangely enough, this was a racing buggy. All the others to use this chassis were trucks: the Brat, Blackfoot, Monster Beetle, Super Blackfoot, Bush Devil and the latest (as of 1998), the King Blackfoot. (And yes, I forgot a lot of others that should be in that list.) The chassis saw the most changes going from the Brat to the Blackfoot--the biggest of which was the differential and dual front shocks. When I helped my friend James build his Bush Devil, though, I barely recognized the chassis! It changed a lot over the years...

Further Photo Caption

The photo up there depicts my Brat during the later stages of its life, during the "monster truck" phase.

You can see the Tamiya Lunchbox tires and front bumper under a Jeep Comanche body. The front suspension was rebuilt to mimic that of the Blackfoot. (In other words, dual upgright shocks.) The steering mechanics were shifted a bit, and a servo poked its head out the bottom of the chassis to steer this truck.