TOPIC:

Hey y'all,

Any of you know what the letters for the different Tamiya chassis stand for?
I know a couple... for example DF (as in DF-01 and such) would mean "Dirt Four", referring to the 4WD off road chassis.
More or less the same with the DT series - RWD (2WD) dirt cars, so "Dirt Two".

FF - front wheel drive and front motor?
Also seems obvious that the "T" in the TA series stands for "Track".
Naturally the F chassis is for formula (1) cars.

I could start googling of course but let's hear what you know!

thanks for the info.
the alones Iknew was ff for fwd and the f for formula.

What Tamiya came up with is always intriguing... they seem to follow their own peculiar logic sometimes.

Some more obvious ones :

TRF = Tamiya Racing Factory
RM = Racing Masters

And I suspect that the "A" in "TA" could stand for all wheel drive.
There's a couple more - M chassis, TL, TB, TT...

QD, Quick Destroyed
XB eXpert Build (yeah right)
RTR Ready To Run



SRB Special Racing Buggy
FAV Fast Attack Vehicles
ORV Off Road Vehicle

XC Xross Country
CC Cross Country
XV Xross Vehicle ?

DB Dirt Belt
DT Dirt Two
DF Dirt Four

WR Willy Ranger
CR CRawler
TXT Tamiya Xtreme Truck
TLT ? Tamiya Little Truck

TA Touring group A
TB Touring B
TL Touring Light
TT Touring Trainer
FF Front drive Front motor

M Mini

Thanks to BlackHoleSun

Ah! "Touring" should also have been obvious...
Are all the TA chassis Group A cars? Not that that's a necessity.
Some F chassis cars also have additional letters, like :

F103L (long - especially for Indy cars)
F103LM (Le Mans)
F103RS ?
F103RX ?
F103GT (Gran Turismo I guess...)

Sorry only did the abbreviations for the chassis, will leave it to someone else to do the abbreviations for the differences between the single chassis types
like -..S -..SW -..F -..ra etc.

Just have a look here , I love that guys site.

I know BHS of course and there's some great stuff there.
Some of the info I've found to be not quite accurate but I guess that's unavoidable...
And I've either just overlooked the search function or it could really use one.

Interesting that a Japanese company use English abbreviations, or do you think the chassis type numbering came from somewhere else & was applied later?
Were SRB & ORV ever Tamiya abbreviations, (I mean did Tamiya ever call the SRBs "SRB" rather than "Special Racing Buggy" or is that something that came from the fans/owners?)
Could the later DT, TA, TL etc codes have come from Tamiya USA involvement?
Feel free to take the p.i. as I really don't know any better....

eddrick wrote:

Interesting that a Japanese company use English abbreviations, or do you think the chassis type numbering came from somewhere else & was applied later?
Were SRB & ORV ever Tamiya abbreviations, (I mean did Tamiya ever call the SRBs "SRB" rather than "Special Racing Buggy" or is that something that came from the fans/owners?)
Could the later DT, TA, TL etc codes have come from Tamiya USA involvement?
Feel free to take the p.i. as I really don't know any better....

I would guess that the abbreviations would have come from Tamiya, but not from the outset - they would have been applied pretty haphazardly, probably only after the 2nd (or later) vehicle using that chassis appeared, or maybe only applying to spares or hop-ups at first.

The only abbreviation I've done any research into was the FF/FF01/FF02 chassis type, and that was pretty tedious ... I think it would take someone with a full set of Tamiya catalogues and RC Guide books & a very keen desire to know the answer to solve that one.

I've yet to see any evidence that the USA was/is Tamiya's biggest market outside of Japan, other than the usual points to USSR on a globe & says "that's the biggest so it must be us" wishful thinking . Tamiya USA having any feedback into what Tamiya actually does is most unlikely - I think it's more a case of what's popular in the US becomes cool in Japan (& everywhere else) a bit later, rather than Tamiya making something they think will sell well in the US.
If you are going to make that argument, then you'd also have to accept that Tamiya have made British cars (BTTC, Minis) just for the UK market, French cars (Renault Clio Williams, Citroen Xsara, that old blue thing the name of which escapes me ATM) just for the French, DTM cars just for the Germans, and so on.

Also, having any English (or Engrish) on a product, regardless of how much sense it makes it automatically cooler in Japan

SRB and such may not be official abbreviations but I'm sure the universal chassis types came from Tamiya.
The manuals always seem to be in semi-English at least, even the Japanse editions.
Some cars got the type description years later, like with the Manta Ray being called DF-01.
The FF had it's name from the start though... and I'm sure one of the Fs stands for front wheel drive.
I checked - the 58121 (first FF) also has this on the front page :