Schumacher Racing Products

Schumacher Racing Products

Type	Private Limited Company (Ltd.)
Industry	Racing
Founded	1980
Headquarters	Northampton, England
Key people	Cecil Schumacher Robin Schumacher Phil Booth
Products	Radio-controlled Cars
Number of employees	30
Website	www.racing-cars.com

Schumacher Racing Products (or just Schumacher) is a British manufacturer of radio-controlled cars and accessories with a primary focus on high end racing products.

Stock Schumacher Menace GTR with body off.

History

Foundation The founder Cecil Schumacher, Cosworth a transmission engineer who was recruited from Borg Warner to lead the design team to adapt the Hobbs transmission (whom he had worked on) to handle the Cosworth DFV's power. Cecil spotted his workmates driving radio-controlled cars on the company's helipad and decided it needed a ball differential after noticing the cars skittered as well as his son, Robin Schumacher. He soon started noticing large areas that these early primitive cars could be improved. Having noticed high tyre wear he introduced the ball differential to radio controlled cars.^[1][2]

These ball differential were used by Robin then his friends then local model shop request to stock it and soon international orders followed. It came to the point that Cecil Schumacher was making more money from this side business than through his employer. So in 1981 Schumacher Racing Products was formed in Northampton, England.

The company has always operated out of Northampton^[3] but sourced some components from China like most other successful RC companies, however the majority of manufacturing remains in England and Schumacher remains very much an English company. Cecil Schumacher's son Robin Schumacher took over the business in 2001.

1980s The first car to be produced by Schumacher was the XL lexan chassis pan car in 1981 which had intentionally highly flexible chassis. This was followed in 1983 by the "C" car which was made out of fibreglass reinforced epoxy resin sheet and designed specifically for racing on carpet. It included many features that are still around on every modern 1/12 scale car, race wins include the euros in 1985 and 1988.

In the latter half of the 1980s, off-road RC cars increased in popularity. In 1986 the first 4WD 1/10th scale off-road buggy was launched called the SWB CAT. This launched the CAT (Competition All Terrain) brand. The car was an instant success with Masami Hirosaka taking the 1987 IFMAR World Championships^[4] who was lent a works car having noted his driving form during practice sessions.

1990s Following the success of the 1st generation of off road CAT's Schumacher continue to produce many successful off and on road electric cars. The popularity of the touring car class seriously affected the off-road world during the 90's. Schumacher stepped down the development of this class through the 1990s. Schumacher was now starting to dominate a niche in the "fun" car sector, with high power/speed nitro powered models capable of real speeds in excess of 80 mph.

2000s Over the turn of this century the Schumacher product line-up became quite familiar with the "fun" cars with increasing number of nitro products however it remained in the 1/10th competition touring cars market.

2010s The flood of cheap high volume low margin ready to run car produced in Asia meant the company no longer produce a nitro car or fun car. Schumacher now concentrate on the high level 1/10th scale electrical competitive market. Alongside there Mi touring car range the company re-entering the off-road scene with the CAT SX (4WD) and Cougar SV (2WD).

Racing Success

World Championships

Podiums

Position	Year	Title	Driver	Model	Electrical Spec.
01 !	1987	IFMAR 4WD Offroad World Championship	Masami Hirosaka (JPN)	CAT XL[5]	HPI Motor, Sanyo Batteries, KO Speed Control
02 !	1993	IFMAR 4WD Offroad World Championship	Ben Sturnham (GBR)	CAT 2000	Speedo - Nosram, Motor - Tanaplan, Batteries - Orion
03 !	1993	IFMAR 4WD Offroad World Championship	William Mitcham (GBR)	CAT 2000

National Titles

BRCA

National Manufacturer Series

Great Britain See Schumacher BTCC

Competition cars

^[6]

1/10-scale 4WD off-road buggies

1/10-scale 2WD off-road buggies

1/10 4WD electric touring car

1/12 2WD Electric Pan Car^[37]

1/12 GT12 circuit and 1/12 oval

Other Cars

Footnotes

References

Works cited

External links

• Official website
• Official Forum
• Fan Forum