Eccentric

iTrader: (3)

There've been some good side issues discussed here:

1)RTR Nitro's being too sophisticated for the noobs that have been steered/attracted to them.

2)Hobby Shop idiots (and magazine ads) that steer/attract noobs towards sophisticated/fast/expensive RTR's.

3)Whether the recent shift in racing popularity towards 1/8th nitro off road buggies/truggies has hurt the sport.





However.....................The original question that started all this question is flawed. To me, it reads as "Did nitro hurt the (previously electric) model car hobby?" Well........................Nitro and Electric RC cars have BOTH been around since the late 1960s!

Before the days of RC (talking 30's,40's, and 50's here) gasoline and later nitro powered tethered cars (car ran in a circle on a banked track, connected to a central point by a steel cable) were the ONLY racing game in town. Some of these beasts went well over 100MPH!!!

In the 70's, electric cars were mostly 'toy grade'. Serious on-road racing was again almost exclusively a nitro sport. Associated Electronics started out with cars like the RC300 and RC500. Electrics didn't realy come into their own until the late 70's and early 80's (most notably the Cox/Kyosho Scorpion series and the AE Pan Cars), due to new battery developments (NiCads of decent capacity). I got started in RC cars (as did many others) by graduating from 'toy' electrics to nitro on road cars and off road buggies.

This was before the MRC/Tamiya, Kyosho, and AE electrics exploded in popularity. I jumped on that bandwagon to get away from the unreliable nitro off road buggies of the time, and to get into racing as NOBODY was racing nitro off road in my area. Electrics continued to gain in popularity into the late 90's (the golden age of the 2WD electric stadium trucks and TC's) when 1/10th Gas Trucks, Nitro TC's and later the RTR MT (think TMAXX) crazes took off.



So......what does all this rambling mean???

Nitro did not come out of the blue and hurt/ruin the sport. The popularity of nitro just shifted back into the forefront. With Brushless/LiPo setups and conversions becoming more sophisticated (yet affordable), I'm quite sure that the pendulom will once again swing back the other way (as it has done before).