Tamiya Asterion Project

I'm trying to recall how I even found out about the Asterion and I can't recall the answer.  I probably saw an ad for it when reading back issues of RC Car Action.  The layout of this thing immediately got me curious.  A belt drive off road truck with  a front mounted motor?  Who ever heard of that?  Only Tamiya would do such a thing.  The XV-01 is just such a chassis, originally built for rally cars.  It has 4 wheel double wishbone suspension with front and rear sealed gear differentials.  The "T" in XV-01T presumably stand for Truck, and this is just a slightly lifted version of the original with longer shocks.  Besides being totally unique in layout, I really liked the truck body and the chrome decals, so this one immediately went on my list.  The problem was, this was the only XV-01T ever made and it had been out of production for a decade.  Finding one new in box was no small task, but I managed to import one from Hong Kong.

If you are thinking belt drive and front motor don't sound too good for an off road vehicle you are probably right.  However, the belt and all the electronics are almost completely sealed from dust and rocks by an enclosed chassis compartment and protective wheel wells.  Although the motor sits out in front of the front axle, it is well protected by an aluminum motor mount and sturdy bumper cage which is fastened at multiple locations.

So how well does it work?  Pretty darn good, actually.  It is probably the fastest Tamiya vehicle I have seen on a stock silver can motor (which I upgraded anyway).  It is incredibly stable in turns and so quiet you can hardly hear it.  Traction is good on gravel or grass.  The ground clearance isn't great and it certainly isn't a crawler, but for a dirt track I think it is excellent.  I haven't tried any big jumps, but over smaller berms it flies nice and level.  I imagine a nose dive off a triple would be a problem for the front motor, but I don't intend to try that.

The livery on this model uses reflective chrome decals and is quite unique, however the body appears to actually be from the rare 58146 Chevy S-10 set from 1994.  The Asterion came out in 2012 and quietly made the body available again.

The model is so pretty that I knew from the start I wanted to deck it out with blue aluminum upgrades.  The official Tamiya upgrades are hard to find so I went with a Yeah Racing kit with most of the suspension parts in it.

Update:  This model was destroyed in the 2022 fire.  It has not been replaced.