The upscaled, road legal Tamiya Wild One Max is here!

Childish glee is still apparent in grown-ups, it just comes out in a lower register, as it turns out. Because this is the kind of car that reminds us all that being childish isn’t a bad thing at all. Welcome to the wonderful world of The Little Car Company’s latest scale creation: the Tamiya Wild One Max.

Ok, so if you were into remote-controlled cars as a kid, you’ll know this. The Tamiya Wild One was a little R/C dune buggy released back in ’85, along with it’s lesser-known sister car the Fast Attack Vehicle (same thing, just painted a sandy colour and with a gun mount). Instant success and many core memories for contemporary small people.

The usual Tamiya build that teaches kids about mechanical objects through stealth, making them assemble oil-filled dampers, plug the cogs into differentials, all the good stuff. And now you can be Ray Lynch (the little plastic man whose name adorned the door on the original model car) in real life.

How? Well in a genius tie-up, The Little Car Co - whose usual 75 per cent remakes are of famous classics like the Aston DB5 or Bugatti Type 35 - is building a Wild One you can drive.

So you get a spaceframe long and wide enough to take two full-sized adults in proper Cobra Racing bucket seats with four-point harnesses (and yes, big people do fit - we tried), a 38bhp (max) electric motor and eight swappable, modular battery packs that make up 14.4kWh of juice. That’s enough for roughly 68 miles of off-road driving or 125 miles on-road if you’re careful.

That’s the best bit, though; the Wild One Max can be made road legal, running to the same regs as ‘L7e’ quadricycles (a bit like the same laws that cover the Citroen Ami), so you can go to the pub/school/commute at a max of 62mph. Which is definitely useable. Ok, so there’s no storage and even with a roof and windscreen you’ll get wet, but it’s a massive smile on wheels. 

It’s also not some lash-up. The frame seems super-solid, and the five-inch digital display and button sets are marine-grade and therefore waterproof so you can hose down the ‘interior’ (what there is of it).

Brakes are by Brembo, springs are by Eibach, adjustable dampers by Bilstein. Tyres are Maxxis front and rear on 14s, and there’s not much else to it. Although the first 100 Launch Edition cars do get a little plaque and a limited edition Wild One R/C car included in the price. Which is £35,000 (excluding VAT and shipping), by the way, so not beans.

There’ll be a cheaper one later, possibly that you can build yourself, possibly without the road-legal bits (windscreen, lights, wipers, number plates etc), but that’s all yet to be finalised.

And if that sounds expensive, then it probably is, for a toy. But for a little car that makes absolutely everyone grin when they see it, it’s cheap at half the price.