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Can anyone confirm if the rerelease Optima shell is identical to the original or if not what the differences are.
I have a genuine original sticker set but no shell to go with it at this stage

original and re-re, I have both of them and I think they are identical.

There were some rere optimas on ebay for 269.00, scratched boxs. Cheap enough may be for parting out.

Technically, if Kyosho created a new mold for the reissue Optima body, the reissue body may be considered different (even if similar). I can't speak for every mold Kyosho once had. Maybe they used the original body mold in the case of the Optima. But the general view is that many (all?) of the old molds Kyosho used in the 1980s no longer exist. So new molds had to be made. This was the case even for some Tamiya reissue bodies, as stated by Fumito Taki.

In a collecting sense, a car is only 100% vintage to me if the parts were manufactured in the heyday of the car's original release (the 80s). So even if the new Optima body were made with the same mold, but I had a choice between it and another one that I knew was from the 80s, I'd still prefer one from the 80s. No more fussy than the action figure collectors who want vintage packaging

hibernaculum wrote:Technically, if Kyosho created a new mold for the reissue Optima body, the reissue body may be considered different (even if similar). I can't speak for every mold Kyosho once had. Maybe they used the original body mold in the case of the Optima. But the general view is that many (all?) of the old molds Kyosho used in the 1980s no longer exist. So new molds had to be made. This was the case even for some Tamiya reissue bodies, as stated by Fumito Taki.

This also applies during the actual production period of a car, as injection molds are prone to wear and tear that leads to worse tolerances (not much of a problem in an action figure, major issue in anything that needs precise movement). Even when you look at parts that Kyosho have reused for other cars you will find small differences between batches from different years.

Kyosho have reused many parts originating from the Optima for a variety of other models, some of which were brought out 20 years later (!). Only in the last decade or so they have created more new molds for new cars. It's also quite fun to look at the gearboxes (especially front gearboxes) of cars released after the Optima and see that they basically are all based on the original Optima gearboxes with some changes. Kyosho's diffs for all of their 1/10 cars up to 2001 were all based on the diffs for the Optima. Etc. Etc.

This means that there are parts that still had the same part number 15-20 years later, with only the header card attached to the bag changing to the newer Kyosho designs...

In a collecting sense, a car is only 100% vintage to me if the parts were manufactured in the heyday of the car's original release (the 80s). So even if the new Optima body were made with the same mold, but I had a choice between it and another one that I knew was from the 80s, I'd still prefer one from the 80s. No more fussy than the action figure collectors who want vintage packaging

It also depends on whether you want to run the car or not. Older parts may have problems due to age, e.g. plastics become less supple over time and may break more easily.