Hi there and welcome to TamiyaEgress.com, a personal blog all about my restoration of a classic 1990’s Tamiya Egress. A car that to me, was and still is the pinnacle of Tamiya’s illustrious product design history. Some may think that creating a blog expressly for this project maybe somewhat over the top, but I work in design and digital media, so it seemed the most natural thing in the world, so please excuse me this rather OTT endeavour :)
If you’re wondering why I picked the Egress, and not the Avante, or Avante 2001 as my lifelong RC dream machine, then the answer to that is simply timing I think. The Egress was the car of the moment when I was in my early teens. The Avante was big as I was getting into RC cars, but the Egress was the killer car that Tamiya released around the time that I was racing. And most of all, it was the THE car that pretty much nobody could afford to buy. It was the white elephant of the race track. It cost a fortune to buy and fix. As a thirteen year old boy thumbing through Tamiya’s oh so beautiful catalogues each year, gazing at what could never be, I’d accepted that I’d never own an Egress, no matter what. I came from a good honest working class background, and no paper round, car cleaning or pocket money could ever amount to the cost of an Egress. So it was to forever be, a car of dreams.
I’d been knocking an old Quick Drive Super Sabre around in my early RC years, loving every moment and yearning to get a real kit car to take to the race track. Either my own or my mates dad’s used to take us down to one of the local racing clubs each week to sit by and watch the action unfold. Tamiya’s used to dominate the lower class races, the C, D and E classes, where as the Schumacher’s, Kyosho’s and Yokomo’s used to own the A’s and B’s. Now and again some rich kid would come along with a suped up Avante, Astute or Egress and join the fray in the A class, but that was rare in truth. None the less, even though we hardly ever saw the Egress, it’s pure awesomeness in the Tamiya catalogues and shop windows was enough to fall in love for a lifetime.
One evening down at the local track, me and my Dad got talking to a guy who’d just bought himself a Schumacher Cougar and was in turn, selling his race ready and rather war torn Madcap. I looked to my Dad with what must have been pitiful eye’s and he somehow (Goodness knows how as he was very tight fisted ;) said ‘We’ll buy it!’. I was overjoyed! My first real kit car, was now in my hands!!! It came with a whopping 16 Triple, which was WAY more power than I could handle at that time, so even though I took to the track with it a few times (and a miserable failure in almost every race) the Madcap spent most of its time on the local streets with my mates. I was forever to be in love with Tamiya by this point.
With racing now in my weekly life though, I soon wanted a real racer, something rock solid and able to take the pounding that the local track would undoubtedly dish out. The next year my parents gave me a MASSIVE surprise and bought me…no, not quite, it wasn’t an Egress…but a brand new Schumacher Cougar! And from that day forward, the Egress was never to be, as I fell head over heels in love with my 2WD mean machine and went on to race well with it for the rest of my teens. The pinnacle of that racing was when me and my two best buddies went on to dominate the B final with our kick ass Cougars, taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd…and yes, 3rd place was mine ;)
It’s this teenage obsession that has led me to this point, a time in my life where finances are somewhat better than when I was in my teens and I can now, finally, after over 15 years in the waiting, get myself the car of my dreams.
Rather than simply go out and buy myself a shelf queen, or even a boxed, un-built example, it seemed only right to rescue a battle hardened racer from back in the day. To take a 1989 Egress, that had been raced, crashed, modded, and fixed, and in 2011, restore it back to its ‘fresh out the box’ condition. So, with that in mind I managed to snipe myself one just like this on eBay in January. It was a lucky find too, as they rarely appear for sale due to being as rare as rocking horse shit. Take a peek at her below. These pics were taken before I began this journey. What a mess. She’s in an appalling state. But you know what, that’s exactly how I wanted her, in dire need of love, attention and restoration.
After a very long winded intro, I welcome you to the blog, I hope you enjoy your stay!
