Mercedes-Benz C11 1990: #TAM47484
A few weeks ago I saw a YT video about this kit and instantly got rememmbered about the older days. This was back then one of my favorit kits in the Tamiya catalog.
Since I was a child back then I couldn't afford it and my parents refused to buy it. In addition there wasn't an "on road" track nearby to drive it properly. So it remained a dream.
But now it's time to make this dream become reality :-)
Racecar history:
Whenever Group C sportscars are shown nowadays the're well known for their pure insanity and a lot of people well remember cars like the C11, hte 787B from Mazda and the XJR-11 from Jaguar.
The car had its race debut in 1990 at Monza and scorred a pos 1 / 2 with well known drivers like Karl Wendlinger, Jean-Louis Schlesser, Jochen Mass and Maro Baldi. During the 1990 season of the World Sports-Prototype Championship the car managed to win a total of 7 races. However the C11 didn't take part of the famous 24hrs of LeMans. Sauber decied to not defend their victory in 1989 since the 1990 24hrs of LeMans didn't count for the Sports-Prototype Championship.
Most of the other Sports-Prototype drivers, including Martin Brundle in his XJR-11, sayd, that it would have been nearly impossible to follow the car since it was way easier to drive, had more power and more efficient aerodynamics than other group c racecars back then.
In 1991 the successor was the Sauber C-291 but due to some techincal issues in the early season Sauber decided to run the C11 along the successor.
More details can be found in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_C11
RC kit history:
In 1990 Tamiya first released the Sauber C11 as kit with item-Nr 58088. 14 Years after its initial release there was a second kit with Item-Nr 58351. While tha chassis itself stayed more or less the same the newer kit included an allready painted and finished body.
The box cover changed in 2009 when they released a second batch / version from the Tamiya specific white box art to a black box art.
In 2022...18 Years after the last release...Tamiya decided to bring it back to customers not with the item-nr 47484 and again with a black art box cover.
While the chassis remained almost the same the newest releases all contain a clear polycarbonate body (1mm) and a sports tuned motor as well as high grip foam sponge tyres.
More details about the dimmensions and a detailled parts list are available here https://www.tamiyausa.com/shop/110-f-1gtindy-cars/rc-1990-mercedes-benz-c11/ and here https://tamiyabase.com/tamiya-models/47484-47484#original
The build:
I found the kit at a nearby hobby shop in Switzerland for about 150$ https://www.scamora.ch/pi/RC-MODELLE/Auto-Modelle/Elektro-On-Road/Bausatz-Modelle/rc-kit-tamiya-sauber-mercedes-benz-c11-1990-110.html
Compared to other vinatge kits and re-releases this is a rather easy one to find.
The kit is easy to build and it's quite fast since the manual only consits of 20 build steps with additional 6 for the painting and livery.
Since I first saw a build clip on YT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4oZGuvd84o I got hooked to the few hop up options and decided to add them as well.
Hop-up parts:
Unfortunately the YT clip isn't listing a detailled hop-up parts list. So it was a bit of fiddeling around with "pause" and "zoom" into the clip to get all the parts together. I doubt they do have much of an impact but if you can go with blue alloy tuning parts there's no doubt you should do :-) Here's a list of the used tuning / hop-up parts:
TAM42375 - 1280 Sealed Ball Bearings (2)
TAM54158 - Full alloy diff (F104)
TAM54240 - F104 Clamp Type Wheel Hub
TAM53008 - Kugellager 11x5x4mm (4)
TAM53901 - TRF Damper F013/F103GT/F104
Since there are no official hop-up parts for these vintage kits they need a bit of adjustments and I had to design and print some parts on my 3D printer to made them fit perfectly. But it's no big deal and you might find "fitting" parts in other kits out of the box.
If I find some time I'll publish the printable *.stl files on Thingiverse later on.
And like every other tuned rc car with hop-up parts from Tamiya this one looks great even if you don't see them with the body on.