There are certain things that only Tamiya would do. Re-releasing the venerable 58060
Monster Beetle from 1986 is not a surprise. Putting it on a
different chassis is not a surprise. But what about making a
Volkswagen Beetle monster truck that does wheelies and has portal
axles? No one would do that. No one else. The 58672
Monster Beetle Trail is an amalgamation of many different sets.
The body might look somewhat like that of a Monster Beetle, but it is
actually a smaller version from the Quick Drive series, a group of
simplified and shrunken versions of classic trucks and buggies released
from the late 80's to the early 90's. The Monster Beetle QD was 46006
from 1990. The GF-01 is a 4WD wheelie chassis from 2014 which
itself is derived from the older 2WD WR-02 chassis from 1999. The
portal axles are much more recent, having only been used on the 58660 Dynahead from 2018. Put all of that together, and you get the Monster Beetle Trail and the GF-01 TR chassis.A wheelie chassis is obviously not made for trailing or crawling, so what did Tamiya do to address that? The addition of portal axles lifts the chassis giving it more ground clearance and slowing down the wheels by an additional ~2:1. The differentials have been effectively locked by inserting balls of hard putty. Other than that, it's still a GF-01.
So how did it all work out? I got it mainly because I was curious and it happened to be on sale. I wasn't expecting much. As often happens with these strange Tamiya models, I was pleasantly surprised. It can still do wheelies despite the gearing, and the 4WD is actually not bad. Even the dreaded friction dampers seem to work OK in this application. As a trail truck, it works just fine and is fun to drive. As a crawler, however, it is woefully inadequate. This is mostly due to the significant rear weight bias for doing wheelies. This results in a backflip on any moderate to severe grade.
There were lots of other QD bodies back in the day. I expect Tamiya to continue the series if this one proves popular. Blackfoot Trail anyone?
Update: This model was destroyed in the 2022 fire. It has not been replaced.
 Page 1: Assembly |
 Page 2: Final Photos |