Time for another new RERE section- now MARDAVE!

[GoMachV]

Looks like Mardave sold their molds and stock to StackRC and there will be rere Cobras as well as an updated design for modern (UK) tracks! I own a Cobra new in box but ill surely pick up one of these too.

https://stackrc.co.uk/

[Ronbo]

Not familiar with the Cobra, whats special about it? UK based? I only remember schumacher, maybe corally in UK

[GoMachV]

They were an early company, I don't know of their track record abroad, but in the USA there was never a distributor that I know of.

[RogueIV]

Mardave Cobra is pretty well known in the UK no real presence here in the US though. From what I've heard they handle pretty well.

[Lowgear]

One of the last companies I ever thought we'd see a re-release from.

I'll have to set it up.


Edit: Done

[RCveteran]

These have always been intriguing over the years to me. Not much info on them here in USA. They look basic but have all the right basic formula it would seems at 1st glance to get around the track just fine.

[Dadio]

Mardave have always made budget minded Racing cars but don't let the budget part fool you as they were intended and succeeded in being entry level racers that could be upgraded and highly competitive, the Meteor was the poor man's RC10 , virtually cloned in some respects . The meteor was the last car I bought back in the day and other than the Schumacher CAT nothing got really close to it at our school club . The Cobra was a more original design that came later but had the same philosophy.

[terry.sc]

A quick history lesson.
Mardave was one of the first rc car manufacturers in the world, making 1/8 nitro cars in 1970 and electric cars in 1976. Schumacher started because a young Robin Schumacher and his friends raced Mardaves and his father thought a differential would help the handling. When the bigger US and Japanese manufacturers started developing 1/12th cars, Mardave developed their more basic chassis into the stock car classes that are still popular. There's still a Schumacher connection in modern times, people were wanting to race the basic Mardave oval cars in circuits, so the GT12 rules were developed based on the Mardave chassis, so specified a full length chassis and floating pod, then Schumacher developed a chassis for the class which was successful enough that Schumacher then developed the Eclipse 1/12th chassis from it which went on the win the Worlds and caused all other 1/12th manufacturers to move away from the short chassis with the pod hanging off the back that everyone was using at the time.

Mardave moved into buggies in the 1970s with the 1/8th Mardave Marauder, a simple design that was so much cheaper than anything else at the time. When electric buggies took off Mardave made the Apache, an electric scaled down version of the Marauder and one of the earliest mid motor buggies. Mardave probably sold more Apache front suspensions than kits as we bolted them to the front of Tamiya SRBs as they were much more durable than the Tamiya parts. In the mid 80s Mardave then developed the Meteor, with Mardave being a one man operation Wes Raynor took so long developing a Scorpion copy that the RC10 came out, which is why the Meteor is a copy of the Scorpion gearbox mated to a copy of the RC10 suspension. You could buy a Meteor for a third of the price of the basic RC10 kit so they were a very popular club racer, especially as it mounted the short wishbone front end on a wider chassis plate so the handling was more forgiving than the RC10 on our tracks. Hardly ever saw an RC10 but raced against plenty of Meteors. I ran one for a couple of years, they were pretty competitive at the time.

The Cobra was released in the mid 90s and was a big hit for club racers. It looks simple because its a stamped alloy chassis rather than the moulded plastic chassis that everyone else was using at the time, but again it was half the price of other race buggies and parts literally cost pennies to buy. The first buggy I know of with the front shocks mounted behind the tower which is so popular these days. It looks basic, but the suspension was properly developed. While I never had one, I did try a friends example and I was impressed as it had the more aggressive steering and handling of a 4wd buggy rather than the understeer that most 2wds seemed to have back then. While they weren't successful at national level where sponsored teams with big budgets dominated, at less prestigious competitions they were very successful and could match the best from Associated, Losi and Schumacher. With Mardave being a one man band for most of its life, they rarely if ever were sold outside of the UK as international distribution adds a whole extra level of complexity to a business that they were never equipped to deal with.

Mardave these days is still a one man operation and their main business is in 1/12th oval cars and bangers. I suspect he doesn't have time to deal with people demanding another rerelease of the Cobra. They rereleased the Cobra in 2021, I suspect having the time to do it then but not these days due to demand from racers. I just hope it doesn't go the way of the Predator, where it was sold to another company that shut down not long after buying teh rights to the buggy.