TAMIYA-THON #5: Dark Impact

Today's pick is the Tamiya Dark Impact recently released in '06. When this buggy was announced, I told myself that I had to have one. Maybe it was the new chassis design that was intriguing to me, the Dark Impact was the first to utilize the DF-03 chassis. It is 4WD with mid-rear mounted motor, the battery mount is located longitudinally on the chassis, and the battery is inserted at the bottom of the chassis. I've always been fond of the race buggy look, but most of them were 2WD which I don't really like. So when I saw this, I knew it would be the perfect basher for me.

However, it was released during my first year of university, so funds were very limited hence I couldn't get one. A good friend of mine, Joel, impulse ordered one from HK when it was released. He has a habit of acquiring new releases and selling them really quickly. We ended up making a trade for one of my monster trucks for the buggy. At that time I was obsessed with the Renault F1 R26, so here are the results. I also upgraded the stock plastic shock units to alloy ones from 3racing which were purchased from my favourite hobby shop, Zoom Room.

(Click pics to enlarge)

It's been out of service for a while for a while though, so it's pretty dusty.









Overall, this is my favourite 10th scale buggy to bash with. It handles great and it's very durable. I've bash it hard and took it off very high jumps and I haven't broken a thing yet (touch wood). Hopefully I can get it back up and running for this summer. The following link is to Tamiya's page on the buggy if anyone's interested.

Tamiya Dark Impact