“God created the world in six days—if Tamiya had written the manual, he would have finished it in four.”
Author Unknown
If you’re even casually into plastic model kits or RC cars, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the name Tamiya—one of the most important companies to each of those respective hobbies.
And the man behind that indelible link was its former President and Chairman, Shunsaku Tamiya.
His father Yoshio Tamiya founded the eponymous Tamiya company in 1946 as a sawmill and lumber supplier, which produced small wooden model kits as a side business. Thanks to their popularity, Tamiya soon began focusing solely on those wooden models.
Then, when Shunsaku Tamiya joined the company in the late 1950s, he was influential in the pivot towards plastic model kits and, later, radio controlled cars and trucks.
Shunsaku Tamiya helped establish Tamiya’s in-house mold and die department, which enabled the company to branch out with incredibly accurate scale reproductions of race cars, aircraft, and military vehicles—including several battery-powered models, which was a relatively new trend at the time.
Thanks to Shunsaku’s innovation and inspiration, Tamiya was able to grow into the preeminent Japanese model kit maker by the late 1960s.
…But when Tamiya released a 1:12 scale radio-controlled model of a Porsche 934 race car in 1976, the company soon ushered in a new era of RC car technology and realism.
Tamiya focused on both accuracy and innovation, developing new modeling techniques and radio controlled technology to make its RC model kits some of the best in the world.
The success of its early RC cars led Shunsaku Tamiya to be appointed President of the Tamiya Corporation 1977. He would remain President for the next several decades, overseeing Tamiya’s immense growth in the RC car and model kit markets, before stepping back in 2024.
Shunsaku Tamiya passed away earlier this week at the age of 90.
His impact on the model kit and RC car industry cannot be over-stated, and his legacy has touched seemingly every aspect of these hobbies. Rest in peace, Mr. Tamiya.
Special thanks to Tom Lynch, Summit Racing’s in-house Tamiya enthusiast, for his help with this article.
The world is a lesser place now.