It's funny how upset some of these guys have gotten about the new 808. History has shown us that most cars a DIRECT copies of the Kyosho Burns car.
Along comes the MBX-4 and it's pivotball front end which is copied by other manufactures almost instantly. So now there are two "different" platforms to choose. The racer is the winner here.
Fast forward a few years (ok maybe more than a few!!!) and Losi comes out with a raically new design. Not quite clean slate but probably about as close to it as possible and still have three diffs! Again the racer wins.
Now Xray chose to follow Losi's lead and base their new car on the 8ight. Did they improve on it? Time will tell. On papaer it looks like it but as we all know the track is where the truth will be told! I believe the racer still wins here!
I wise old guy once told me "boy, its ALL been done before". I will never forget that statement!
Here's why, Mind you this happened back in the early 90's when GM had just released the Quad 4. It was an amazing feat of "new" technology. DOHC, 4-valve per cylinder, pentroof combustion chambers AND centrally located sparkplugs.
Now the reason the old guy told me what he did was becasue I was unloading a 1930 something stright 8 cylinder Desenburg (SP?) head from the back of his truck. It was probably 5 feet long! But it had DOHC, 4 valves per cylinder, pent roof combustion chanmers and yes centrally located spark plugs.
When we set it besdie the Quad 4 head it really looked like someone had scaled the Desenburg head down chopped 4 cylinders off it and called it "new"! Was the Quad four better? YES! It was about 1/4 the size and less than half the weight but had double the power!!!! Evolution....