it is a Montech F13 body

I'd be suprised if MSRP is below $400 to be honest. This is Xray after all. I love Xray touring cars but this one is gonna have to be a "game changer" for me to go away from Tamiya F1 cars.

The car pictured either has the battery inline like nearly every other car or has been the battery near the middle of the chassis giving a similar weight distribution to the other link cars on the market. A 103 style rear battery across the chassis would not fit under that shell.

Although I never found a single bellcrank steering setup to be an advantage It did make Ackerman adjustments easier. The only downside i found was that I had to add a fair amount of weight over the front end to smooth the car out over bumps that wasn't needed with the servo in the normal position.

I believe that Martin Hudy designed the X1 to use a shorty Lipo battery across the back between the 2 side links.

If I recall, the Tamiya F103 held a 6-cell NiMH stick pack across its back, just under the solo shock and big damper disks (like the one in the pic below).

i have a 103 i run with a shorty pack but that body looks narrower in the rear than a shorty pack is long.

This picture of Francesco Martini's X1 prototype is a little fuzzy, but it shows how the shorty pack Lipo battery is situated in the car.

The prototype pictured clearly shows the battery is wider than the pod but the curvature of body pictured is narrow than the pod. The setup under the body is not the same as the prototype shown. Its possible the production cars configuration allows for a transverse battery that fits some bodies and inline that fits all. The only thing we can be sure of is that the 2 cars pictured are not using the same configuration, the body posts are even in a different location.

Mark, isn't that wide black section part of the body?

-Mike

yep, if you watch the video you can see the links under it, its just not large enough to accommodate a battery underneath. its hard to tell in that photo but side view photos of the car show that its a little less than 1/2 the height of the side pod and just over .5"" long or at its highest point so it would need a battery no taller or wider than .75". a regular short pack is approximately 1" tall and 1.7" wide.

Mounting the battery across requires a shell without a skinny and/or low profile rear end. Most of the older 90s era bodies work fine. I use jordan 191 and tyrell 019 bodies for that configuration.

I'd side with mtveten, doesn't look like a shorty 2c could fit there, although the transition from the white to flat black area doesn't look as severe in the XRay picture. There just looks like too many compound cruves to flare that with a heat gun though.

Here's a pic of a nice red X1 geting ready to race at ETS round 1 in Hrotovice.

So Tamiya bodies will not fit at all?

The bodies above are so ugly! I use a f109 body on my f103 with shorty pack across the car. Should easily fit the xray at a guess

You couldn't be more wrong.

That in fact is a Yokomo YF001 driven by a friend of mine at the ETS finals in Trencin / Slovakia.
Why Xray is using this as a title picture is beyond me

The F104 Pro body should fit, as long as you don't use the undercut side pods.