The 99 WRX body turns quicker than anything else because it has the shortest overhangs. If you keep it light (several dry coats of paint, rather than 1 or 2 heavy ones) you will keep a great deal of weight out of the farthest points from the center of yaw. This same principal can be seen in figure skating. When the skater is spinning, and pulls her (hopefully) arms in, she spins faster. Good performance cars also try to keep the weight as far within the axles as possible. It may not seem like much weight, but in 8th scale, the weight is proportional to the handling of the car, just as it is in a real car. With a TGX, it may be nominal, as they are far from running "on the edge" like some of the new 8th scale cars. But just for grins, the opposite is true for my drift car. I have the battery pack shoved out beyond the rear bumper to carry as much weight to the corners as possible. This makes drifting much smoother, as the car does not whip back and forth. I am sure that this is the opposite for a real drift car, but for RC, it makes it very controllable.

I also agree about the 4WD situation. I am probably OC, which is why I always loved the Audi A4 body on my old 10th scale cars. It was true to scale with AWD. I have learned to get over it

The Skyline by Tamiya is a tough call for scale. There were so many variations that the body is only scale for a few of the schemes. The pink and white one I have (Nismo GT-R) had a much shorter tail in real life, however, the Penzoil car had a longer tail, but had a large gap in the front fenders to vent pressure from the wheel wells. The models have a decal to simulate this feature. They did the best they could to replicate as many variations of that car. But I think Tamiya still has the best scale bodies out there.

Your choice of springs is fine for your cars I imagine. You would know if it did anything wrong immediately. I just choose the soft setup, because it makes the cars very realistic, and doesn't beat the car up at all. It also helps them run smoothly. I always stress this, but I think a good setup all around is the reason that some of my cars have been running on the same suspension, gears, shocks, and even piston and sleeve since 1988.

For the best grip, definately go with the low profile slicks if you are on a smooth surface. If you are on the street, or some heavier texture asphalt, go with the M Grips. They are the stock profile, and very soft, so make sure to run the molded foams inside instead of the stock foams. Also grind the 6 casting flanges inside the rims, if they are the early TGX wheels. TGR and some other Tamiya wheels, as well as all of the HPI wheels have no flanges. If the road is too rough, the low profiles actually end up bouncing over the terrain. Remember, these cars on pavement are like running your real car at 100mph over a road of constant pot holes. That is the main reason I always favor softer setups.

You could always try med and softs, with a sway bar, if you get too much roll.

All of the cars have full alloy suspension, most have alloy shocks and brake upgrades, and a few have the racing chassis upgrade. My favorite cars are the TRFs, as they have all black plastic, with silver chassis.

By mounting the shocks as far out on the bottom, you are leaning the shock down more horizontally, which is what you want to do. As mentioned, I actually took longer shocks and mounted the tops to the tops suspension pivot, and it actually handled better than any of my other TGXs. Sadly, that car had a 60+ encounter with a concrete curb. (It was my first Banzai car, before I set them up soft) It had a second impact with my truck tire as it exploded and flew back into the truck we were pacing it with! The setup was not the best for flat out racing over reflectors in the road, but it did handle the best.

Back to tires, M grips completely spank the stock slicks. I can use the stock slicks almost as drift tires in the Sirio18 powered car. It pretty much obliterates any tire, but oddly enough, the Rally tall tires stand up to the most punishment from overpowering. The car I gave to my buddy (originally a true Subaru99 kit- they also have a silver chassis, and different transmission cover) also has the same Sirio18. He has never run anything but the Rally tires, and they dont grip great on smooth pavement, but on asphalt, they are actually better than the stock slicks. The only car that I have stock slicks on is my wife's car. She will never know the difference.

If you want a real fun car to drive, put M grips on the front, and stock slicks on the rear. It will want to swap ends on you, so never let off the throttle!

Other tricks I do on the Banzai cars is to firm up the suspension. First grease the shaft (alum suspension upgrade only) and then take a drop of epoxy or thick super glue and dab it on the lower suspension joints. This fills all the gaps and tolerances and makes the suspension arms very tight (fore and aft) which is what controls the geometry. I used to zip tie the front and rear arms together also to keep them from wpbbling. That car got destroyed, so now I actually drill a hole in the bottom chassis and mount a trailing arm on it to firm up the a arms. The TGR Banzai car already has holes in the top plate that I put ball joints in and ran similar arms. AT speed, you must have all toloerances out of the suspension, or the car will veer left and right as the suspension moves around.

The other thing I do is either run an exhaust tube from the tuned pipe over the car and out the back, or I flip the pipe over and let it hang over the back with a short exhaust tube. None of my cars dump oil all over the side, as this is extremely messy. I do not understand this practice in any RC car design. It also makes sure that one of your rear tires is always running on oil????

I also saw that some are worried about applying too much power to the two speed trans clutch. I have replaced every one of my high powered cars with the cam type clutch. There is no slippping into gear with this piece, and no clutch to slip. It just hammers into second. On the M Grip cars, you can hear it chirp if you are in a slight turn when it shifts!!

I took pics of all the cars again lined up last night. I will post as soon as I download them.