Like anything else, keep an eye on craigslist... Got both cars the Stampede and Bandit, Two nice controllers, quick charger and batterypacks for 100 bucks.

The RC10 ate plastic gears a lot, and took out a motor along the way. The Traxxas Revo 4x4 we had was a completely different apples/oranges deal. It was bulletproof and all you had to do was look at the build quality to see that. Most of our reliability issues came from running them into trees, rocks, curbs, etc, not defects from manufacturing.

Running a RC car into a stationary object at 40 mph is gonna break something, no matter how well-built it is.

The gear issues with the RC10 soured me.

Car and Truck Categories

HPI and Tamiya make the best products IMHO. My son started out with a Tamiya Blackfoot and just now got his HPI Savage X 4.6. I always suggest buying a kit as opposed to a RTR (Ready to Run) as building the car is part of the fun and teaches what to do when parts break.

Just a quick update, my son ended up with a Traxxas Bandit for Christmas. This thing is freaking awesome! It's already been crashed more times than I can count, thus far no adverse effects. It's super fast for my enjoyment, or I put it into training mode so my son can easily drive it. My only complaint is the included 8 hour charger and 3000 mah battery pack, but I'll be remedying that soon enough with a better charger and battery pack. He currently only gets 10-15 minutes of run time going full speed in the grass and dirt.