TOPIC:

Martin wrote:

I was a little surprised to learn that the badly scratched bit of bent ally on the back was not in fact a home-made item, but the factory bumper

Mardave was, from what I understand, a really small scale operation, with little ability for fancy materials and design. I'm sure I read some years ago about it being quite a backyard, homely business. But with those basic designs came some quite worthy cars.

I actually found a NIB Mardave Meteor a few years ago, still in a shop. I bought it and had it for a little while, before selling it on...if I still had it, I might have sold it to you! It was complete, but yeah there were one or two parts in the kit that made me think "was this factory original?" - and yet, it definitely was

H.

Mardave are still going, but now mainly concentrating on 1/10 and 1/12 oval racers. They still make them out of bent bits of ally and vac-formed ABS though

[rant]They are fairly typical of the two-men-in-a-shed company that the UK is full of and the Government seem determined to lumber with increasing mountains of red tape instead of letting them get on with pulling us out of the mess the fat-cat bankers got us into. [/rant]

AFAIK Mardave has changed ownership twice ... 70's to 90's they were in Leicester, 00's I'm not sure, 10's it's one bloke in Norfolk

Somewhere in Norwich apparently, I keep meaning to find out exactly where & go visit

eddrick wrote:

Somewhere in Norwich apparently...

That's a bit optimistic ... postcode is NR16 1NL, it's not exactly "bustling metropolis" out there

HI!... Let's just hope it's not some guy named "Billy-bob" and his sister, I mean his wife that are building those cars in their kitchen next to the still. lol!

It's impressive that they've survived. A lot of far larger RC car companies from the 1980s have disappeared.

Although of course, times have changed. My brain only seems capable of liking a couple of the cars they made way back in the 1980s (Meteor and Apache) and basically nothing else since (everything since about 1992 looks the same to me!). Looking at their current cars...

Am I mistaken, or does the Mardave "About" page mean they are yet another old, historic RC manufacturer who doesn't care enough about their own history to write a single paragraph about the origins/milestones of the brand? www.mardave.co....rdave.html

Hard to be too nostalgic for them, when they aren't.

It will be exactly that I suspect... Swaffham & Aylsham are quite close to Norwich & they do deal in livestock, relatives & body parts out there. My other RC's a chicken....

AFAIK Mardave was bought by one of their customers who was into oval racing. The current owner has no interest in off-road vehicles. To be fair, I think the main reason he is surviving is because he has found a niche. I think he literally works out of his garden shed, so his overheads are low and he is very active in the oval racing club scene.

There was talk of him rereleasing the Cobra, but that has died a death. I don't suppose he could compete with the current manufacturers on price and the original Cobra didn't have enough of a following to sell in any numbers to nostalgic old fools like the Tamiya products did.
I mean, why would you buy a Cobra when you could buy a technically superior Traxxas Bandit or Ansmann Mad Rat for (probably) less money?

eddrick wrote:

Somewhere in Norwich apparently, I keep meaning to find out exactly where & go visit

Mardave
Turnpike House
Carleton Rode
Norwich
NR16 1NL