New chassis? New chassis! Hype?

[decryphe]

I just asked again, no updates from the Chinese company, just that it's "still in progress, maybe by end of year". First time I asked they estimated 12 months, now a year later, the estimate is 6 months, so maybe next summer?

[Ivan141]

And they keep posting pictures of stock japanese AE86's to tease with, last vid they had a coupe standing in a line up of new chassis.
I'm not too convinced about the quality of the chassis, have read some negative reviews of the escort's they do. Still it would be good to have a source for
new body parts.

[decryphe]

(07-28-2025 07:39 AM)Ivan141 Wrote:  I'm not too convinced about the quality of the chassis, have read some negative reviews of the escort's they do. Still it would be good to have a source for
new body parts.

If I can build retro-EVs with this chassis, I won't mind if the quality isn't on OEM levels. Solely making it possible to daily a modern 80s car would be enough for me.

[decryphe]

Okay, now the supplier confirmed that the body can now be ordered with a lead-time of approx two months. Single bodies are accepted, so don't worry about the MOQ of 5 that's listed on the page: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/R...17244.html

The pictures of the white painted body are supposedly their newly manufactured 0-series chassis.

[banpei]

I saw a post by Battle Garage earlier this week on the Chassis:
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DR3QUZSD73q/
It's the same car/chassis that was at Sema, so it's not produced for them specifically. The weird thing is that the reproduction seems to have some errors that were due to copies of previous (chassis) repairs on the original, and bad post-scan processing. It's not something they can't fix, but it shows the quality of the product is not something that's sold as "new".

[decryphe]

Oh cool, I'm excited to see what BGRS does with this new chassis. If it's solid enough, I'm really interested in getting a chassis and building a race car out of it.

[Power_uP]

Someone at my local model car club showed me this video and it was actually a surprise to me.
People seem to be very concerned about the quality of the welds.
As yet, I'm not entirely convinced that buying one is a good idea. Maybe the quality will improve in the future.

[banpei]

Yes, I watched that video a few days ago as well. The quality of the welds, gaps and strut tops isn't great. Hiding bad welds with seamsealer is obviously a bad thing to do. For a restoration, it will be quite useless, as you have to go over everything and redo all the work. It's probably cheaper to have someone fix up a mediocre shell or simply pick a more expensive car in good condition to have a good basis to work on.

However, as Battle Garage said in the video, it's probably a great value for someone who wants to build a track car. On such a car, you probably want to weld in a cage and other reinforcements anyway.

[decryphe]

Yes, I've been following these videos too. I'm probably going to do exactly that, build a full-on track car with no regards for being original, and reinforce anything and everything that isn't great from factory.

The car will be entirely empty except for a steering wheel, seats and cage. Drivetrain will be a BEAMS and a modception rear axle. Annex suspension and T3 adjustable suspension bits. That also means I won't have to source almost any of the trim bits.

Some time down the line I may or may not try to get that thing road legal, but highly unlikely.

The other fun thing one could do is graft together two 2-door rears into a trailer for another 86.