Overall

I have built and driven a few different versions of Tamiya’s humble TT-02.

The basic car out of the box is extremely simple and not very good to drive once the speed goes above 30mph (depending on what motor is installed, hop-ups are a must).

My XV-02 as we have seen is a great handling car and I am impressed with it - but how does it compare with some of the TT-02 cars I have owned?

We will look over the different aspects of the cars, and why you would look at one over the other. For this to be fair, you must compare it with a hopped-up version of the TT-02 like the SRX spec car (same price as XV-02 RS Pro).

A great new look and many new components.

I am going to make my overall verdict very simple. This car is just much better than the TT-02 SRX. Let's go over why this is.

Weight

Firstly - weight. The XV-02 is much lighter. It uses a brand new slimmer carbon reinforced chassis that is rock solid and yet weighs very very little.

The TT-02 uses a rear motor position. It very much likes to swap ends especially if powered hard from a corner.

You have to keep an eye on the ‘twitch’ and be ready to catch it before you end up facing backwards on track.

I literally could not get the XV-02 to do this even if I tried - it just fires itself out of tight corners with ease.

The reason for this is the added centre differential option makes the car much more usable and can be tuned to suit a variety of driving styles.

Also, the 40-tooth overdrive gear can be put up front for increased stability - with this setup I found that the car is just so much easier to drive at the limit. I’m confident on a twisty track that this car will leave a hopped-up TT-02 well behind.

It reminds me quite a lot of my Schumacher Mission FT frontie in the way that it just puts you at ease when driving. The only big difference being where you power it from a corner this has all four wheels powering you forward.

I think that in a Tamiya racing category with brushed motors being used, this difference may not be too huge as the speed and acceleration will not show up the differences quite as much - but for brushless motor-powered racing, the difference is like night and day.

Weight Balance

I think Tamiya has got the weight distribution on this car just right. The motor sits towards the front and along with the short battery modification I made on my car, it seems perfectly balanced.

I was a little concerned with the position of the battery being up on its side, but it doesn’t seem to affect anything at all and the four corner covers on the chassis provide a nice way to tidy up the wires around the receiver and ESC.

So overall, a more versatile, lighter, more balanced chassis that is far more tuneable than the TT-02.

Better and more stable out of the box and the added hop-ups such as the centre differential/slipper clutch, and overdrive bias gear make this car a great buy.