I sometimes find myself scouring the eBay markets for RC cars that I might like and this is one of those cars that I loved the 1:1 version of in the middle to tail end of the 90’s. It probably wasn’t as successful as Porsche wanted it to be, but it did win Le Mans after a couple of other teams cars dropped out of the 24 hour race with reliability problems. It also featured in the Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed video game released in 2000 by EA. A game I really enjoyed playing to its full completion.
The other Tamiya Porsche 911 GT1, the 96 version, which also I have, is one of my favourite GT1 cars from that era too. I love the evolution of that into the later GT1 ‘98 a couple of years later. Much like the Mercedes CLK GTR and that teams evolution, Porsche made drastic changes to the shape of the car, flattening it’s profile significantly and making it quite drastically different from the road car derived GT1 cars of the era. These late 90’s early 00’s era GT1 cars like these, and the Toyota GT One, formed much of what started the change to LMP or “prototype” race cars that we see now. These late era GT1 cars went against the spirit of the racing road car rules though as the teams simply built a single roadworthy version to meet the homologation requirements, when the earlier rules required a more significant commercial offering of real cars…
Anyway the RC version of this car is an unusual one, as it doesn’t come on the usual touring car style road chassis... The Tamiya 911 GT1 96 was on a touring chassis, TA03RS, probably because it was fairly similar in shape and scale to the 911 GT2 and GT3 that also adorned the shorter wheelbase TA03 and TA02 chassis’ of the time.
This particular one has come in full original spec, except I think the Sport Tuned motor has been replaced with a basic silver can, which is a shame. It also had both servos fitted, for steering and the MSC. The steering one seemed to fault and go full lock when powered on, so that went in the bin. I don’t like mechanical speed controllers, so I stuck a Hobbywing 1060 in it to get it running, and put an old Acoms AS12 in the steering position. These chassis’ need the servo to have the mounting wings removed so it can sit flush to the chassis. Not something I’m a big fan of doing, especially to expensive new kit, but I don’t mind doing it to a an older vintage servo; and this one is actually in pretty good shape.
On the whole this model is in pretty good condition. After a clean down and some grease on the moving parts it runs pretty nicely and is a good example, even without ball bearings throughout.
The ride height on these F1 chassis’ is very low and to be honest I don’t have many places to go and run it. They’re very much designed for ultra smooth racing tracks and not for street bashing. As these models aren’t raced anywhere that I can find I think I’m going to have to sell it on to another collector in the near future. Maybe I can get it down to West London Racing Centre for a few laps before that happens...
