This thread has obviously gone a bit off topic but here are my thoughts.
Good luck to Lee with whatever manufacturer he goes with for 1/10th, I would love it to be Schumacher to push forward a Great British company but the rumours are he will drive for Yokomo whom I'm also happy to see making a comeback from a few dark years and is another quality product.
Some of the comments on here are just not acceptable in my view, if people want to have an argument then go and do it in private. Such comments scares people from trying our excellent hobby/sport and also makes the sponsored drivers who could offer invaluable advice uneasy and reluctant on posting comments on oOple.
The theories banded about on this thread about TRF don't really stack up, yes the exchange rate hasn't helped with things made in Japan but Kyosho and Yokomo are still manufacturing there. TRF is an exclusive brand that many people would of paid the premium for if the products were actually able to be brought openly in the UK. Yes you could buy from the Far East but even then kits weren't easy to get hold of, and for many who want to support model shops in the UK and want local support this is a big stumbling block. IMO TRF wasn't about making money or profit but to showcase what Tamiya could do, like HRC for Honda. Perhaps they have had to rethink things due to budget constraints or is a re-alignment of their business strategy.
Many companies do have things produced in the Far East, it can be cheaper but from my experience (I work in a heavy engineering environment) this is more for high volume production like iPhones etc where companies can post their own QC staff in the Far East as well. You cannot rely on the factory that's going to make the products for this quality control, by the time the products are back in the the UK or wherever it's too late and just costs you money. The smaller the devolopment and production runs the worse this issue could be. Products like smart phones are devoloped to death so that production will have a high yield and near zero comebacks. They can do this because of the volumes sold.
For smaller production volumes it's just as cost effective to produce most things in the UK, factories in the Far East want to do production runs in the tens of thousands and not the hundreds like would be needed for RC race cars. If you leave things totally to the factories in the Far East then you can easily get a reputation for poor quality and cannot respond quickly to these complaints or to demand, who remembers when Durango couldn't even supply wheels or other parts for their kits? I couldn't race for a few weekends because the parts I needed weren't available. Tamiya (and others) keep production in Japan because they can control the quality, design updates and production volumes.
I have worked in both China and Japan (Japan for six months) and the cultures are very different, copyright laws are blatantly ignored in China and the quality can be let's just say variable. Japan is very different, failure and poor quality are not things they will accept.
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