Tamiya tank rc control?

[Antony]

Just bought a Tamiya tank to build (1/35 Chieftain Mk5). Having not built any land vehicles for a long time I wondered why the Tamiya kits have markings for batteries in the hull? Did they used to make the means of making it r/c? If so do any of such kits still exist?
thanks

 

[PaulTRose]

cos back in the day (60's and 70s) they were made to have a little motor and so be a toy....then they realised people bought them as a kit not a toy and deleted the motor and gubbins........i still have a Tamiya saladin that i built in the early 80s that has a motor

 

[Jens Andrée]

Tamiya are reusing a lot of lower hull pieces for newer kits and what you see are the remnants of the older kits Paul was talking about, but Tamiya released as late as last year R/C kits without motors and servos as scale models so they're still doing it.
Their last two 1/16 scale kits (M1 Abrams and Jagdpanther) are just R/C models without the R/C stuff.
Upper hull looks great but lower hull are just metal tubs and bare no resemblance to the real tanks so they've had a lukewarm reception...

Some kits are still with electric motors in the kit like the Tamiya Mk.IV e.g.

There are also signs of R/C parts in some Trumpeter (or was it Hobby Boss?) kits I've built but I've never seen R/C variants of those kits, but they probably exist on a street corner somewhere in China

 

[Antony]

Thanks for the response guys. I kinda guessed that they did not support rc. It shows how much these models need updating properly