do they still make these?

[dog]

i guess i was a little suprised to see that "Mr. Epoch 1-43" aka "mini z" aka "tiny rc" actually started a forum based on these guys... i have three... they are fun to drive on a table top...

so, do they still make these or did "Epoch 1-43" buy the remaining stock from Apex? :D

[LBRC]

Epoch still makes the 1/43 Indoor Racer, or to be more precise will do another production run any time their existing stock gets low.

The North American distributor Apex USA was just up for sale that’s all. One of the original partners responsible for brining the Epoch to North America to begin with bought the company back, so it’s moving forward again, although somewhat slowly since it had some real problems, basically they managed to single handedly alienate every major retailer in the US.

If you owned a store would you buy a product form someone who can and will undersell you every chance they get. Eventually the retailers i.e. hobby shops, wholesale suppliers, and on-line stores get tired of getting burned so they just ignore the product altogether.

Now if you had 7,000 stores across the US like Radio Shack you could afford to be a sole supplier, if not when the retailers dump your product it dies. So the manufacturer is also stuck when there’s a contract and it’s your largest potential market that’s having problems, you just put every thing on the back burner and hope something happens to help the situation since your can’t dump the distributor unless they actually break the contract.

Now that Apex has been sold Epoch is once again interested in the “Indoor Racer” as a serious product. What slows everything down is that Apex’s new owner now has to convince retailers that it’s worth carrying the product, and that he and his Apex is different so they won't get burned.

Apex and Tiny do have a deal going to help keep the price down and get the car to you without delay though. Basically if you order a car for personal use off the Apex web page your order will be transferred to a retailer, in this case Epoch1-43 or TinyRC to be filled. If you are a retailer i.e. hobby shops, stores like CarQuest for holiday gift items and such, your order will be filled form Apex. This way Apex can concentrate on being a distributor and doing what a distributor should, you know marketing and working with the manufacturer to make a better product so that we can actually get new bodies and hop up parts, not to mention eventually seeing a Spec-3.

:rolleyes: Ok, it’s safe I’m off the soap box now, enough stalling its back to the mill and another motor mount project.

[dog]

ahhh.... now all that makes sense... there were defintely a group of die-hard fans that created a forum called wegotu.com ("u" meaning micro)... don't know what happened to them...

i think the spec 3 should include the ability to upgrade parts like motors, bearings, the diff, bodies, wheels etc.

i would have personally liked to see a little tighter turning radius for true table top racing... that's where this little thingy has it all over things like the larger mini-z... maybe some track with barriers to keep you from flying off the table, too!!!

also, i have some velcro-attached lexan bodies that "someone" gave me... they really improve the performance over the heavy stock bodies...

hope it all works out... it a fun car... :)