Regarding the plastic, I believe it's a good thing, not a bad thing. Its not unreasonably fragile and I prefer a plastic car because you are more likely to isolate damage to one part like a knuckle, which you take off and replace. An aluminum car gets bent and causes all sorts of problems further into the core of the chassis. This is true with current 4wd cars as well. I ran a Capricorn which is mostly aluminum, and switched to an Xray because the car is much more durable and doesn't have the tweak issues.