Many of us loved cars long before we were old enough to actually drive them. It’s this youthful obsession that sells millions of Hot Wheels, slot cars, and radio-control models every year. And if RC cars were your thing, you probably dreamt of what it would really be like to climb inside the little buggy or truck and experience the ride from behind the windshield. Now, that dream can be a reality, thanks to the life-sized hoon machine known as the Tamiya Wild One Max.
Our guide to this madhouse thing is Jason Barlow, editor at large for Top Gear Magazine. It’s very much a nostalgia piece. The Wild One was first released in 1985 as a radio-controlled car modeled after dune buggies and sand cars. It had functional suspension and a badass stance, and was undoubtedly one of the coolest toys you could find under the Christmas tree that year.
We’ve been looking forward to this one for some time. Thanks to the efforts of Tamiya and The Little Car Company, it looks even better as a human-scale machine. The latter company’s usual work involves producing scaled-down versions of 20th-century cars like the Ferrari Testa Rossa or the Aston Martin DB5, designed as the ultimate ride-on cars for kids. The Wild One MAX is no child’s toy, though, being big enough for a grown adult to get behind the wheel.
Some modifications were necessary to make the car work when scaled up to full size. The widened steel space frame chassis has room for two – a driver and a passenger eager to tag along from the ride. The suspension turrets are less pointy compared to the RC car so they don’t obscure the driver’s vision. That’s also a boon for pedestrian safety, too – important, given that it’s actually street legal in the UK and EU. Yes, you can actually take this thing out on the road, because it’s classified as a quadricycle under the L7E regulations, like the Citroen Ami. We can’t imagine a cooler machine for the drive to uni.
“It’s basically pretty friendly,” explains Barlow, noting the ease of which he gets the hang of driving the Wild One Max. “Flick the power button on, engage F, and off you go,” he explains. Right away, he’s sliding the little buggy around in the mud, hitting jumps and making the most of the adjustable Bilstein suspension. It’s hard to imagine a better toy to teach your kids how to rally from first principles … assuming you’ve got a massive field for them to hoon in.
Like the original RC car, the full-size Wild One is electric. The motor is good for 38 horsepower, which doesn’t sound like much until you consider the whole car weighs just 1102 pounds. The Little Car Company claims a top speed of 62 mph, though Barlow quotes a lower figure of 50mph – still pretty fast for a quadricycle. It runs a 14.4 kWh, 48V traction battery, and offers an estimated range of up to 124 miles on-road, or 68 miles off-road. It’s not a fully-fledged off-roader for the toughest situations, by virtue of its low ground clearance of just 10.6 inches. However, it’s got decent approach, breakover, and departure angles at 34.1, 28.4, and 50.8 degrees respectively. It’s more for skating around on dirt than tackling difficult rock crawling situations, and that’s okay.
Inside, it’s kitted out like a proper off-road racer. There’s a Sparco wheel, Cobra seats, and a digital dash and marine-grade switches that look totally hardcore. As a bonus, that means washing out the interior doesn’t put the electrics at risk. Oh, and you can even get a windscreen and wipers – useful for keeping the bugs out of your teeth.
As Barlow demonstrates, the modest power output makes it pretty accessible, and it handles with an excellent degree of chuckability. Sure, it might not win any rally special stages with 38 hp, but this isn’t a racecar and there’s something to be said for the ability to mash the throttle without fear of ending up upside down in a ditch waiting for a helicopter evac. You don’t need big power figures to get the Wild One Max skating and sliding around, and judicious use of the right pedal appears to do the trick nicely in the dirt. It’s a compelling and joyous experience from what we can see, as slow car fast usually is. “Honestly, I think that’s the most fun I’ve had in any car all year,” says Barlow.
Production is expected to begin in mid-2024, so you’ll have some time to wait before you can get one to play with yourself. Launch editions are priced at £35,000 ($43,000 USD), so, you know … consider buying a “real car” before you splash out on one of these. But if you’ve got the money, and a good place to play … looks like a right laugh, innit?
Image credits: Top Gear via YouTube screenshots
I love it. Gives me strong lowcost 7 vibes: take a car and strip away everything not absolutely needed for fun—then GO!
sure, I’d prefer more like 50+ hp, but with instant torque it’s got to be a blast. I wonder when we will start seeing them in trials? Sporting trials, I mean. I don’t know the rules, but seems like there should be a class where this would fit.
now I need to go watch some…
This makes me want to buy one of those tube-frame VW Beetle-based dune buggies and install an EV conversion kit to replicate this for tens of thousands of dollars less.
Not cheap, but I get why. Looks like a lot of fun, though, and there are plenty of more expensive toys that aren’t as much fun. Too bad it’s not street legal in the US, though. Maybe if it were sold as a kit? Emissions wouldn’t be an issue.
I wonder if it could be made to qualify as a low-speed neighborhood electric vehicle (NEV)? That’s sort of the equivalent of quadricycles in the U.S.
The catch is that it’d be limited to 20 mph on public roads. But if you could hide a switch to unlock the other 40 when “off road”…
$43k is deep into UTV territory. Those can be had with four seats and are street legal in some US states. The CVT is reviled and the three cylinders sound like crap but they can have 2-6x the HP. Dollar to fun is probably similar with the lower seating position and electric drivetrain of the Wild One but it’s a tough sell at that price.
I’m a real wild one
Wild one, wild one
Wild one, wild one
Wild one, wild one
Well, I’m just out of school
Like a real, real cool
Gotta dance like a fool
Got the message that
I’ve gotta be a wild one
Oh yeah, I’m a wild one
Gonna break and loose
Gonna keep a movin’ wild
Gonna keep a swingin’, baby
I’m a real wild child
Gonna meet all my friends
Gonna have myself a ball
Gonna tell my friends
Gonna tell them all
That I’m a wild one
Oh yeah, I’m a wild one
— Iggy Pop
First thing that popped into my head. Next do a Tamiya Frog and/or Grasshopper.
I am looking forward to the racing series, rally cross sort of thing, maybe some rounds in stadiums. But mainly Lyddon Hill.
Like this but slower, with buggies.
Hopefully this one doesn’t come with plastic bushings in the hubs instead of ball bearings…
Man, that brought back memories….
Oh yeah. I remember changing out all those on my gold pan. I found some of my old plastic wheels, and they have all cracked at this point. Sheared off.
I don’t know if the Wild One had plastic dogbones too, but my Kyosho Icarus burned through it’s bushings and stripped the dogbones before the end of its first summer. That really bummed me out. I can still hear the “brtbrtbrtbrtbrt” of the bone spinning in the coupler/shaft coming from the diff
This might be a good jumping off point for an idea I’ve been rolling around in my head.. why hasn’t someone made an EV like this but with interchangeable bodies and trim pieces? You buy, essentially, a bare-bones road legal go kart and then you can personalize it with bodies, wheels, interior trim etc.. the possibilities are endless and I’m sure a big aftermarket of 3D printed parts would pop up pretty quick!
If the bare chassis and powertrain were around $15-20K tops, I’d be so in on that.
I’d totally make it into a streamliner and get possibly double the quoted range(AND at freeway speeds) on the same battery. And in a properly streamlined vehicle, 38 hp would be enough to do over 120 mph, if you had the voltage or gearing to reach it.
Local motors was working on that. and with 3d printed bodies
You have no idea how much I have wanted this to happen for years so I can do stupid things to old crapcans like early ’90s Oldsmobile 98s and Ford Aspires.
Speaking of off-road, can we get an update on Mahindra products in the US?
Where we at on those Jeepish things?
There was one for sale near me at a company that sells smaller excavation equipment. This was not long after I saw the article on them over at the old site. Never bothered to stop as the price was a magnitude higher than I could afford back then
Things like this are exactly why the U.K. > the U.S.. Want to build an off the wall toy? Go for it, as long as it’ll pass IVA. Want to drive something imported? No problem, pass the IVA. Want to drive a tank?! Enjoy.
This thing is already banned for road use in the People’s Republic of Texas (you’re free to own guns, but that’s it. Everything else will be micro managed). Even if it could be registered, the size and max speed would make it a death trap on the road when every Karen and Kyle drives a full size truck/suv that wouldn’t even flinch hitting it. Frankly, it’s why I haven’t bought a classic mini, a Miata, or a Pao
What’s the difference between Texas and China?
One is an autocratic regime that exerts tight control over the movement of their citizens and freedom of women.
The other is a country in East Asia.
Not far off. If I wasn’t actually FROM Texas and had a career based here, we would have already left. When the time comes, we’ll be moving back to the UK
On the other hand, here in the states I can drive whatever rusty deathtrap I want as long as the title is clean. Yay no inspections! Rat rods for everyone!
Sure it sucks that I have to wait until 2025 to import a Toyota WiLL Vi, but when I can I’ll be able to modify it however I want and get away with it, the state doesn’t care. We don’t even do emissions tests around here, so I could straight pipe it for maximum obnoxiousness if I wanted to.
I might be limited in what I can buy, but there is so much more freedom in what I can do with whatever I own.
That’s not entirely accurate, especially depending on the state. Since 2020, in the state of Texas, per the registration manual you are TECHNICALLY required to have an sae licensed mechanic inspection any time you do a modification to the suspension, drivetrain, or chassis. It’s not enforced and never will be, but it made it a bear for me to register my school bus conversion while they were finalizing that revision of the registration manual.
I also had a buddy when I lived in the uk with a rat rodded Austin, another with a home built lotus (locost) 7, and another with an m54 swapped e30 that was a screaming metal death trap. Their inspections are really not that hard to pass. My 71 Austin 1100 was held together with flux core welded patches and prayers.
I would daily one of those
I really hope this serves as a blueprint for other companies to start bringing these kinds of things to market. I’d love to have a cheap, light, bare-bones electric sand rail to buzz around some OHV areas in.