Pandora RC's AE86 Trueno 3DR arrives with its own light decals

The interesting decision here is not the car — AE86 shells are not scarce — but the packaging of the release. A clear polycarbonate shell is painted from the inside, which means every lamp on the car is a choice: mask it and back it in color, leave it clear, or cover it with a decal applied to the outside. A light decal sheet cut for a specific body removes the guesswork from that step, because the lamp graphics are drawn to the openings of this shell rather than trimmed down from a generic sheet and nudged into place.

Pandora RC lists VGP-1633 as a 3D Light Decal for the Trueno 3DR, developed to match the body. The announcement text available to us does not describe the sheet's construction beyond that name, so what the "3D" refers to is best read off the product listing when it goes up rather than guessed at here.

The livery is deliberately a separate purchase. VGP-1634 carries the vinyl and logo graphics, and the announcement captions one of its build photos as an example of a TEC ART'S-style build using those separately sold stickers. That split matters to a builder: the shell can go out plain, in a color the owner chose, with the lights handled cleanly — or it can go the whole way into the sponsored look, with the graphics as a second decision made after the paint has gone down.

Pandora RC is a Japanese maker of 1/10 drift bodies, mostly Japanese cars, with around 80 bodies in the range alongside body parts and a personal-order service, and it already sells shells wearing licensed aero such as BN Sports. An approved tie-up, then, is not a departure for this maker so much as the same approach applied to a whole car rather than a kit of panels.

What an approval of this kind commits the shell to is the part worth watching when photos of a production body appear: whether the proportions of the 3-door hatch survive the trim line at the arches, and whether a builder can get wheel offset and ride height to put the tires where the shape expects them. The announcement text we have is truncated mid-sentence as it begins describing the shape the body was crafted from, so the maker's own account of that work is incomplete in the news post.

All three items are listed for release in late October 2026, with sales beginning on Pandora RC's official online store on Tuesday, October 27, according to the maker's announcement. Buyers who want them over a counter are directed by the same post to check store information for retailers carrying the release.

The part numbers to search for are PAB-4228 for the body, VGP-1633 for the light decal and VGP-1634 for the vinyl and logo stickers.