Tamiya Suzuki Swift Super 1600 (M-03M)

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JANG's Impressions

The M-03 platform in general is one of Tamiya's more enduring and commonly-run odd niche vehicles. It's a direct descendent of their first "mini" chassis, 1994's M01, and you can still find it being actively raced around the world today. It's popularity does tend to wax & wane from region to region, but its unique alure keeps folks returning to it for more.

The two things that make the mini cars so interesting are their short wheelbase (and "cute" bodies to match), and unique driving dynamics. The significant forward weight bias tends to make them incredibly responsive to steering inputs, helped even more by the very short wheelbase. Front wheel drive, in turn, makes low-speed on-power oversteer practically impossible to produce, while front-only braking introduces a unique driving feel as well. These attributes tend to apply to the Tamiya minis in general, but my on-track experiences with this particular car here were a bit different than expected. First of all, I should note that the car is quite nicely geared with the box stock setup, propelling it to respectable speeds with the silver can motor. At those speeds, however, steering is very sluggish at best. As I let off the throttle or introduce a little bit of trail braking, it continues to understeer until it reaches a seemingly magic point at which suddenly it "hooks up" and decides to turn like minis I've driven before -- very aggressively. Now, there are a number of things that can contribute to this, and I was running the box-stock setup with box-stock tires, so I am not saying the chassis is bad or that this car cannot be made to handle well. I'm only saying that as built to kit specs, it understeers badly at speed, though at low speeds it handles great.

I'm still a big fan of this chassis, and would like one day to have an opportunity to really dig into one and see how well I can get it to perform. The stock tires on this one are pretty hard and flat, and there is also a lot of play in the suspension pins. Some tuning and carefully selected upgrades should be all it takes to make this a great drive in addition to being a living piece of Tamiya history.

Build & Tips

See the assembly photos & writeup in the Tamiya Suzuki Swift Super 1600 M-03M build thread on the forum.

• IMPORTANT: Never, ever trust the instructions when it comes to body mounting posts. Wait until the chassis is complete and has a battery in it (for weight), then actually mount the body, pins and all, before trimming the posts. The instructions show that you should place the rear underside body pins in the 3rd hole from the bottom on the posts, but you actually need to use the 4th for this body.

One of the nicer points of the Tamiya mini cars is the simplicity of assembly. It took me about two hours to build the chassis, including a couple of short breaks, and stopping to take pictures along the way. What's more, it's easy to create the different variants of the chassis. This "M" (medium length) variant includes a pair of short, simple extensions that go between the two main sections of the chassis, extending the wheelbase from the standard 210mm to 225mm. With longer extensions you get the "L" variant, which has a 239mm wheelbase. Hopup suspension arms also allow you to further fine-tune the wheelbase, even making it shorter than the standard. All of this adjustability has allowed a wide range of great-looking, scale proportional bodies to be produced by Tamiya as well as aftermarket manufacturers.

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