New CAT on the block – Schumacher CAT SX

Although not part of the traditional Chinese calendar 2008 was the year of the CAT. Why you might ask. Simple: UK based manufacturer Schumacher Racing introduced the their first 4WD competition buggy after a good eight years. Without any doubt is the Schumacher series of CAT (Competition All Terrain) chassis one of the most successful ever made. Not only did the CAT XLS win the first ever 1/10 Buggy World Championships in the hand of the marvelous Masami Hirosaka but also many national and international titles.

If you are aware of the previous Schumacher buggies, that includes not only the CAT but also the Cougar line of cars, you will remember that they all have been very different from other designs of their time. Just remember the crash back front end of the CAT, ProCAT or BossCAT buggies or the radical laydown shock absorber design of the CAT EC, SE or the mid motor propelled CAT 3000. As mentioned before did it took Schumacher a good eight years to come up with a successor of the last of the CATs. Some of you might know the so called CAT 4000 prototypes that hit the tracks every now and then or had been seen on the various fairs but they never made it into production. Until 2008, when Schumacher announced the return of the CAT at the annual international toyfair in Nuremberg/Germany. Not much was on display at that time beside a black and white poster with the silhouette of THE new CAT. But there was more. Only a chosen few were allowed to take a look at one of the very few existing prototypes that were hidden by Robin Schumacher and Chris Ashton in the depth of the Schumacher booth …

Front
When the production cars finally hit the stores we where surprised to see how close the prototypes we saw at the Nuremberg fair where to the cars we now had in front of us. The only clearly visible change we noticed are the upper differential cases that are made out of reinforced plastic instead of the aluminium items we saw on the prototype. The remainder of the buggy seemed unchanged although we are quite sure that other changes had been made in terms of the suspension angles, chassis layout details etc.

When we first saw the CAT SX prototype we instantly noticed the unusual suspension design. Well, in fact it was not the suspension that was different from the norm but the was it is mounted to the chassis. Current electric buggies sport different types of brackets that hold the suspension to the chassis plate or the bulkheads. The brackets normally ‘clamp’ the lower wishbones in front and behind the suspension arms like found on the LOSI XXX-4 or 1/8 scale nitro buggies for example and are of a one-piece design. But with the CAT SX Schumacher goes a different way. Of course brackets are used but they are of a multi-piece design and similar to the ones the Northampton-based manufacturer uses on the MI3 range of electric touring cars. This allows for very swift set-up changes without the need to change any parts beside a couple of shims of different thicknesses. Err, okay, to change the caster angle of the front wishbones you will need to buy a set of 7.5° pieces (10° out of the box) but that’s the norm with nearly any competition cars. Thanks to the design of the brackets you can not only change the track width but also the toe angle of the arms. A very nice feature especially when you like to adapt the car to difficult track conditions like very low or very high grip tracks.