Nichimo Luminous - vintage and unusual!

Check out this little RC gem from the 1980s that I picked up from a local collector recently. This is the Nichimo Luminous 4WD buggy!

The 1980s would be the golden era of RC for me where many manufacturers were producing RC cars with all sorts of designs which embodied very unique concepts and ideas. It was an age of innovation and ideas which made the cars from that time very unique - unlike today's much developed world of RC where a newcomer would be hardpressed to tell the difference between a Tamiya TRF201, Losi XXX-CR, Associated B4, etc.

It was cool to pick up such a nice specimen of this buggy - it is essentially a newly built buggy in tip top condition.

Here are some other pics. :)

The buggy came with era-specific electronics too! A mint condition set of Acoms radio gear!




Here's a picture of the buggy without the body shell.




Unique motor placement - doesn't help maintain a low center of gravity I'm sure. lol!




Servo placement on the car. It was interesting to find the manual speed control (3 speed forward and reverse baby!!!) installed *ON* the servo. I am more familiar with the Kyosho / Tamiya type MSCs that had the speed control installed elsewhere on the car actuated by a standard servo horn setup.




Aluminum shocks were considered "racing-spec" then. These are even adjustable with 3 positions for the collar to adjust ride height. I don't see the point though, the springs are so hard even in the top-most position the car sits with zero-droop! Of course, back in the 80s buggies were almost always run at FULL ride height. :)




Cool placement of the switch in the rear under the wing. The resistors for the speed control are located under the switch - very cool.




Check out the cool motto on the wing - I'm not sure if it's original though...




One last pic of the underside of the car. This huge casing houses the limited-slip center differential. See how cool the 80s were? A 3-diff buggy with a cool limited-slip diff!!!



What a cool car. Most guys will say it's the ugliest body-shell ever designed (I would agree though today's cab-forward body designs are giving this a good run for it's money) but you can't deny the car is unique in it's quirkiness!