Pandora RC and the Nagoya pattern shop that carves its drift bodies

The parent company is WADA Wood pattern Manufacturing Inc., at 1-28 Oshimoto-cho, Nakagawa-ku, Nagoya. Its company page dates the founding to 1950, by Masayuki Wada, working "mainly in the area of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Toyota Motor Corporation." In 1974 Koji Wada became the second president, with the history listing Toyota casting work, wooden patterns, prototypes and models.

The radio-control line arrives late in that timeline. The same page marks 2012 as the year "Radio Controlled Body Manufacturer PANDORA RC was established," followed by PANDORA ARMS in 2018 for air-gun grips and WADAKIGATA original products in 2020.

The business page is the clearest statement of what the shop actually does for the drift scene: it "Manufactures 1/10 size RC wooden molds and sells polycarbonate bodies." That sits in a list alongside vacuum molding, plastic processing, model molds — with data design, machining and hand processing named separately — and inspection jigs. Which of the shells start as machined data and which get finished by hand is not something the pages break down.

A pattern shop's habits are legible in the product listing. The AE86 Sprinter Trueno 3DR comes with separate bumpers and light parts rather than everything pulled in one skin, and the package includes decals and masking — the two things that decide whether a builder's window line and shut lines land where the pattern put them.

The dimensions are the ordinary ones for the scene. 196 mm of width sits inside the 190–200 mm band a 1/10 RWD drift chassis expects, and the 257–260 mm wheelbase figure covers the roughly 257 mm standard those chassis are built around. Nothing exotic; the interest is in what the shape carries. The about page says the products hold "the official recognition of a car manufacturer and the parts maker," and the AE86 listing carries Toyota's approval line in print.

Pandora RC takes custom mold commissions, and its mold-making page is unusually direct about the terms. The work covers non-metal molds, and the customer does not end up owning the tool.

The page also sets out the licensing route: for a car from a non-Japanese manufacturer, a license has to be obtained together with Pandora RC. Read alongside the approval line on the AE86, it describes a body brand that treats permission as part of the product rather than a formality bolted on afterwards — which is what you would expect from a shop whose older customers were the carmakers themselves.

Pandora RC publishes its own body-making guide, and the sequence it recommends is worth reading before the first coat goes down: cut about 70 percent of the shell before painting, wash off the mold oil, and paint from the inside. The last point is simply how a polycarbonate body works — color goes on the underside of the clear shell, window masks come off, decals go on the outside — but the first two are the maker telling you that its own release agent and its own cut lines are part of the finish.

The AE86 Sprinter Trueno 3DR listing, with its dimensions, parts breakdown and approval line, is on the brand's own site: Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno 3DR at Pandora RC. The wider catalog sits at pandora-rc.net, and the parent company's trade and history pages are at wadakigata.net.