Rumours and images have been circulating the web since March of this year about a very unique Russian built touring car. The pictures all have ‘A-Matix’ written on them, but this is not the final name of the car according to several forum posts. The car is built by Oleg Babich und Schupik Ilya and they have already won some races with it. I don’t know how hard the competition was, but design seems to be working!

The first version, of which a picture emerged a couple of months ago, had a transverse mounted motor with shaft drive which is something not often seen in touring cars so far. It requires a special transmission to drive the shaft at a 90 degree angle. This was unfortunately not visible in the picture. The other thing that stood out was the unusual suspension. I've already wondered why nobody has ever mounted a pan car type front suspension to a touring car. The suspension this car uses is a bit between a a pan car suspension and a normal a-arm suspension.

The new pictures that just emerged show a belt drive car with the same type of suspension. It’s main feature is the lack of coil over oil filled shocks. The car has suspension arms cut out of carbon fibre sheet. On one end they ride on what looks like pivot balls near the centre of the car, and on the other end the steering block is mounted. The top link to the steering block are two adjustable turnbuckles.

As far as I could figure things out from different forums, the car uses a new type of spring/damping system which is really easy and quickly adjustable and can also be changed for up-stroke and down-stroke damping separately. This is just like full size racing car shocks and allows for a much better adjustability of the suspension system to the track conditions. No other car currently on the market has this feature, and it would be a big leap in rc car technology if this is true! Apparently they have a patent pending for the system and that’s why they don’t like anybody taking any close up shots of the details.

It is hard to see how it works from the pictures. The suspension arms seem to be supported by what looks like some rubber blocks of some sort. It could be that the suspension arms itself flex, and the amount of flex is adjusted by these blocks. Another possibility is that they are using these rubber blocks as springs and dampers. I can see how this would work as a spring, I just can’t wrap my head around how the damping is done.

Hopefully we’ll get to hear more about this car soon, because it really looks like it has some very interesting ideas incorporated which could bring some big changes to rc touring car design! I also don’t know if this is just a hobby project or they are planning on selling the car as well. It looks very well made, and if there is really a patent in the works, it sounds pretty serious. The future will tell…

More images and discussion, here .