I had had a number of department store RC cars before this one but this was the first hobby grade model. We weren't very well off and despite my badgering of my parents and many many trips to the local hobby shop they remained resolute in their opinion that a hobby model was to expensive, they always broke and they never worked properly.
This car wasn't bought new, rather one day my older brother just turned up with it, he'd probably traded something for it with a mate, goodness knows where it came from. We shared it and spent many hours thrashing the remaining life out of this already well beaten car (it already had a cracked chassis and bald tires) together until a few years later he produced a Tamiya Mad Cap in similar fashion to the Hornet. The Hornet has since been mine.
I used to try so hard to get this car looking good (polishing a turd) and spent many hours staring at the last page of the manual with the gleaming new built version which mine could never be. Many times I was frog marched back into the LHS by my mother to embarrasingly return hop-ups e.g. tires, which we couldn't afford and which I generally tried to spend my lunch money on. Eventually though I got older and this car was played with less and less, we moved countries and so it ended up in the loft, forgotten.
Many years later I found the car and decided to restore it now that I have a job, I looked into ebay and then tamiyaclub and then started spending money. A few parts here, a Tamiya Lunchbox there (well it was just round the corner
) and I was hooked again. This car is responsible for my whole collection.All the stock parts I had from my youth are the same as they were in the 80's-90's and I have replaced parts which went missing with time or were missing/broken when I had the car back then with the new hop-ups I can now afford. I only built it up again the other day but have had the parts in a shoe box for two years. I needed to build it now to find what is still missing.
Some of the hop-ups are;
APS rear alloy bumper
Trinity 10 inch wide front bumper/a-arm support
Trinity Monster Horsepower 1988 motor
Trinity nerf bars
You-G coil over shocks all round
You-G rear sway bar
The Hot Trick Stuff front shock towers
CRP heavy duty steering arms
CRP heavy duty tierod kit
CRP heavy duty steering pivot pins
Acoms receiver and servo
I still need a Tamiya TEU101 esc, tires and a servo saver. Then I will paint the body and add my original driver which I won't repaint. I still have the original body at my parents home attached to a plaster mold I made when I was 10ish. I tried to re-pro the body and the plaster didn't release!
Cheers
Ed
Keep us posted Ed 
Man, that's a great story! My first proper r/c was a Hornet and when they rereleased it a few years ago I used one to restore my orig car that i had kept from childhood too. Nice work man.