Tom Slick

I think you're missing some of the points to all this, sir. The TCS rules have changed over the years to require spec motors, tires, bodies, and such in TCS to A) increase the enjoyment of competition--sorry, but watching race after race of touring cars with the same Stratus body and roughly the same paint scheme was pretty boring, so different-looking cars running at different speeds draws more fans as well as new competitors; and B) decrease the unfair advantages gained by either locals accused of extra knowledge of a track or those tinkerers always playing at the gray edges of the rules.
Frankly, I think those conditions are what club races are for. And I love them for it, and go run them when I can. I usually find that the locals who spend more time there than I dialing-in are faster, and I spend the evening trying to find speed and do better. And if I do, it's a great night of racing. And if not, I got beat. Simple. If I ever get mad, it's almost always because of either some bonehead move I made as a driver, or some bonehead thing I did as the mechanic.
But, RC car racing is an expensive hobby. I don't think I even want to tally up the value of the bodies, tires and parts I have stored at home, much less how much I've spent over the years. Everyone is suffering right now because economic conditions are bad. Understood. Everyone wants to use the equipment they've already spent money on, for some other track or series, so they don't have to spend more money to run this one. Understood. But I wonder if it's also understood that if Tamiya America relented and went with the "run whatcha brung" philosophy some fans have exhibited here, Pandora's RC Box would be flung wide open with people tuning their favorite stuff to find that unfair advantage that so many complain of. The unfair advantage, in fact, for which TA's rulesmakers have striven so mightily to compensate.
So just like in so many other fields of life, we have to make a choice. Do we want cheap racing with whatever you got in your closet or garage? Or do you want really close, competitive racing time after time? Unfortunately, right now those two aspirations are competing rather than combining.

And as I have stated before when posting on this string, Tamiya are a business. They sell products. I know of few businesses in the world, in any market, that offer their customers a chance to buy their product and try it out against others with the same product, for fun and gamesmanship. Any expectation that they will sell us some product out of public-spiritedness is at best misplaced. If we don't like their attitude about that, it's still as far as I can tell a free world and you can go run someone else's product. Good luck finding another company in the RC business that is any nicer to its customers.
Tamiya America's staff, headed by (admittedly) my friend FMW, ought to be credited for doing what they can to create rules to minimize or even eliminate the concerns of so many, so that the racing is as close as possible and guys win or lose by their driving. However, I suspect I'll get a lot older and grayer before I hear guys admit they lost because they got flat out-driven.

We are increasingly running spec tires on these cars to defeat the spectre of guys complaining that they got beat by the killer tire insert or the killer compound or the killer rim. We are increasingly running spec gears to defeat the spectre of guys complaining that they got beat by someone's optimal gearing for just what their motor does. We are increasingly running spec motor RPM limits, and soon spec motors--whether DC or BL--to defeat the spectre of guys complaining that they got beat by someone's superior motor tuning or trickery or outright cheating.
In every case, it's because we're complaining that we got beat by something we didn't have, that others did. How seldom have I logged in to this site to hear people admit they got beat by someone out-driving them.
I'll offer one up and see if I can start that dung ball rolling. I got beat and left out of the A-main in FF at this year's Nats, qualifying 11th because my friend Craig flat-out outdrove me. We had the same equipment, the same tires, the same car bodies, same motors, all of it, and he just was faster. He sympathised with me after qualifying, and I told him that was okay, though, because he beat me, and I feel no shame about being beaten by friends. (And sometimes, by strangers!) It makes the day when I might beat them just as sweet.