BREAKING: Team Associated preparing to introduce new 4WD buggy - the B44.5?

0 Nov. 16, 2016, 2:12 p.m.

By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

Electric off-road racing fans have been itching for news about the long-rumored update to Team Associated's multi-time IFMAR World Champion B44 platform ever since team manager Brent Thielke acknowledged at the 2015 IFMAR Worlds in Japan that it was something the engineers would be working on. Speculation on RCTech and social media has been pretty stable ever since, but has ramped up in the past few weeks with rumors that the A-Team has tested something new at a couple of tracks in the Southwest - including last night at OCRC Raceway allegedly using an all-red body.

Team Associated stoked the flames by sharing a social media photo posted by three-time IFMAR 4WD World Champion Ryan Cavalieri, who said he cleaned up his 2005 title-winning JConcepts BJ4x4 and 2011 champion Team Associated B44.1 for a photo shoot - perhaps to document the history of the platform?

This thread on RCTech has been busy since July with people discussing the possibility of a new car, especially after the photo posted by Ryan, and early this morning (at 5:11 AM Central Time) RCTech user "30Tooth" posted a bogus URL to a "B44.5" allegedly listed on Team Associated's website...though the actual target URL was simply the B44.3 home page.

However, about 2 PM CT, a page at a very similar URL (indicating that the B44.5, if it exists, would be a "Team" kit and not a "Factory Team" kit like what 30Tooth joked about) actually went live, with placeholder images and latin text:
www.teamassociated.com/cars_and_trucks/B44.5/Team/