Kyosho Fazer MK2 Charger Review

Well guys, the Kyosho Fazer Mk2 Charger gets a big thumbs up right from the get go because of the huge smile it puts on my face.  This bad boy is like visit back to a warm summer day in my youth.  Yes, you guessed it, I was a Dukes of Hazzard fan so a bright orange Charger is something awesome.  And yes, you can see I'm going full General Lee with this car.  It's a little different than most because I replaced that 1970 Charger grill with a 69 Charger Daytona nose and slapped on a wing to match.  That kinda makes it my own but still pretty Dukes.

My first impression on the quality of the car is that it compares very favorably with the Tamiyas because it is on par with the high end TT-02 chassis not the bottom end one.  It's also pretty similar to the Vaterra V100 based cars.  The suspension is nice and tight so the car should handle predictably.  The rest of the chassis is well designed and built with no obvious defects out of the box.  The radio looks good and is very similar to the cheap Austar AX6S but the entire pistol is scaled up about 15% bigger and has better dual rate controls and reverse limit adjustment.  The icing on the cake is the body, of course, and it delivers on every level.  The paint looks great and the trim stickers are nicely applied.  There a couple of slight imperfections that annoy me a bit but it's a great looking body overall.  I have to note that the lexan seems on the thin side because a couple of reviews I watched made a point of mentioning the thicker than average lexan.  I would definitely not call it thicker than average, it's pretty much what I expected and thicker would have been nice.  If you're in the market for one of the muscle cars that Kyosho makes, I don't think the body will disappoint you in the looks department.

I took the car out with a 2S Lipo and was disappointed to find that I got a dud ESC.  The car would run for a few seconds and then the power would drop off.  Turning the ESC off and then on again fixes the problem for another pass back and forth.  It got tedious fast.  I have contacted Kyosho and they are sending me a new ESC free of charge, so no big deal.  I put in a cheap Chinese ESC to get back up and running and all is good.

With a fresh 2S Lipo, the car is a lot of fun.  It isn't hell on wheels, but it's peppy.  If you've seen any of the other reviews out there, you've probably seen people test it and get about 42km/h (26mph) out of it and I have no trouble believing those numbers.  It handles well, so that speed is easy to control and even beginners shouldn't have to much trouble getting to grips with the car.  The gearboxes are sealed up so there shouldn't be any mechanical trouble.  My only knock is that if your're running in dirty conditions you should take off the fake brake calipers or grit will get in and ruin them.  I didn't read that anywhere, so now my calipers and rotors are scuffed pretty badly.  So far the shocks work fine and don't leak oil, so that's a win for Kyosho.  In going on two hours of heavy fingered driving, the car has gotten good and dirty but the shiny side has stayed up, so it's pretty tough to roll.  Chunky gravel can get in the wheels and drive shaft areas from time to time and cause some obnoxious noises but I haven't had any real damage.

I ran some after market tires (the tires in the link, not the wheels. they seem a little harder to find right now but I added this link because I like them a lot).  I ran them on custom printed wheels for my first run and the car worked just fine on them.  In subsequent running, I've noticed that the cheap rubber I used is actually pretty real feeling.  Based on the softness of the rubber, I suspect that the stock tires are very similar to some others I have and will provide a bit more grip than "real" car tires.  They also won't last very long, being quite soft.  The cheap ones I'm running have a nice feel and they seem to wear very slowly.  About an hour of running has hardly scuffed them.  The only downside to the stock vintage style rubber is that it's expensive (4x the cost of a full set of cheap rubber and wheels for just the rubber).  I also ran some rally tires that I like a lot.

The radio has really good throttle and steering dual rate control so you can dial it from twitchy to nice and mellow very easily.  The radio is really a nice touch with so many companies throwing in flat out crappy radios with their cars.  When I can order a 4 channel radio with hundreds of meters range that works perfectly and it only costs me $22 US, why can't cars worth hundreds of dollars come with a radio that works properly?  This one does and it is appreciated.  This radio makes you want to order a couple more receivers to put in other cars.  Don't get me wrong guys, it isn't really a high end radio, it just works really well for a throw in item compared to so many others.

So, is this car a "must buy"?  Probably not.  It depends on whether you have a soft spot for one of the cars they are offering.  If you love one of the bodies, this platform isn't bad at all.  If you want a great chassis, you probably want a high end touring car.  I love me the Charger, so I fell for the marketing.  That's not a bad thing sometimes, guys.  So how do I rate it overall?

Price -                       8/10

Durability -               7/10

Appearance -            9/10

Parts availability -    5/10

Upgradability -         5/10

Fun -                         8/10

Overall score          7.0/10

Guys, the price is a bit high but you get a nice radio, a great body and a pretty solid chassis.  If my replacement ESC ends up being really durable, that's another plus.  The body is really nice but it's kinda the whole thing with this car, right?  The chassis is well designed and good quality but it's just plastic, right?  So far my ESC was a dud and the body really won't hold up super well to use.  Gravel chips the hell out of it.  The chassis seems really durable, so that's good.  It looks great and that's the big selling feature here, guys.  You can get parts from Kyosho but where I live, it ain't super easy, cheap or fast.  This car isn't really your ideal upgrade platform so it might not be fair to rate it so low, but to me, five is average and this is pretty average for a hobby grade car.  And last but not least, for me it is a lot of fun.  I would have given it a ten if it was faster, a donut machine and the body was more durable.  Fun drops as damage piles up, right?

Bottom line - if you love one of the body shells that Kyosho brings to the table and you have the money, buck up, son!  Just get a basher shell if you really want to drive the chassis and you can put it back on the shelf with a pristine body when you're done for the season and then drool over it all winter.

Check out my conversion to 1/8th scale rally style car if you want to play with this thing in the gravel.

Wrench to drive or drive to wrench?