Losing grip – can’t come to grips

I like to believe that I don’t often rant in this column, but today, please allow me.

What’s up with MST’s pricing model? It makes no sense what so ever. On one end, we have the budget kits of the RMX 2.0S and the soon to be released FXX 2.0S. The RMX has a fair price of around 200 dollars for the kit, and the price tag of the FXX will probably be about the same. An excellent way of getting into the hobby. With decent electronics, you will be looking at around five hundred dollars to be up and running. Nice.

But what if you want to upgrade? Well, there’s two options. Either upgrade bit by bit, using original MST parts, since the after market for MST is pretty much non existent. This will be very expensive. Or, you can buy a fully maxed out kit, which will also be very expensive. We’re talking a grand for the MST FXX 2.0 KMW. That is a lot of money, certainly well beyond my hobby budget.

So, you either go budget and get mostly plastic (which is fine, but not fancy), or you spend a fortune and get a kit that is as shiny as Queen Elizabeth’s royal crown. Where is MST’s answer to Yokomo’s YD2-SX and EX? These represent excellent value, coming in at just over half a grand, with plenty of nice upgrades, but not going to the ridiculous extreme of MST’s KMW-versions. I don’t know exactly how much you save on these, if you compare with getting a basic YD-2S and then buying the parts separately, but it is surely a three digit number. Quite possibly starting with a two. The upgraded kit is quite simply a much better buy. Good value, upgrades in all the right spots, but not extravagant.

Now, on the other hand, why doesn’t Yokomo have an answer to MST’s RMX 2.0S RTR? This RTR is easily the easiest and best looking way of getting into drifting. Less than four hundred bucks, and you’re good to go. Perfect, for people who don’t want to spend a lot of time chosing electronics and such.

The whole drift kit versus RTR thing, is certainly quite different to the pretty well established standards of the crawler and bashing scene. It might be that the East Asian market functions in a different way than the American market does, I wouldn’t have a clue. Anyway, it just seems to make a lot more sense to release one RTR version of a car, and one kit version, with a couple of well chosen upgrades, without going nuts. At least to me, but then I’m not a Taiwanese market dude, and certainly will never be one.

What’s your thoughts on MST’s pricing model? Does it make any sense to you? If so, please explain and relieve me of my ignorance on the matter, cause I just can’t come to grips with it.

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