TL;DR: What's the cheapest way to get people racing? How can we make it cheaper? Used is not an option.
Lets set the scene. I walked into the new RC car track and I wanted to find out what classes they were intending to run. I asked, and I got told VTA is the way to go. It's the cheapest to get in, it has the lowest consumables costs, and it's incredibly popular.
http://www.windycityrc.com/ in case you were wondering. They're run by good people, and have good prices, and a good facility.
Getting into VTA, from scratch, is really a $600 proposition. Between the $150 car, $40 in tires, $30 body, $200 in electronics, $100 radio, and a $30 battery... Then there's taxes. And this assumes you're a person that has glues, paints and tools already.
And as I found out later, this doesn't include the cost of a transponder.
$600 to get into a hobby is pretty steep. Especially when you're going to be ~bad at it~ for a long time.
The usual answer is "buy used!" Well there are a long string of issues with buying used. Most importantly, you have no real idea of what you're buying. It could be abused, could be worn out, could just be a bad choice of chassis. As a new driver, you don't know what parts you need to stock, and you're likely to have one good crash, and be out for the weekend.
I bought a TC4 to run VTA at windy city, because the parts are ~all~ stocked there. There's nothing I can do that's going to leave me in a lurch.
There are a couple options I can see. First is to find an already produced car and build the class around that. Second, is to break out the CNC and start turning out staggeringly cheap pan cars.
The M05 Option:
Entry cost: $250
Pros: In production, pre-existing parts support, can move onto Tamiya Cup.
Cons: Upgrade-itis, cheater parts, body options.
I've done a bunch of digging, and it appears that the cheapest 1/10 cars on the market that have any support of support system are the Tamiya M05 cars. They're $99-150, and come with a 550 motor and ESC. They also have essentially fixed gearing.
The M05 chassis has some challenges. First, they only accept roundcase LiPo packs. This means taking your battery to the next car becomes less easy. Second, they don't have adjustable suspension geometry. And finally, they have shocks at all four corners.
Shocks on all four corners sounds like a good thing. But I'm not sure that this is the case. Having more things to adjust isn't necessarily good for a first timer.
The aftermarket is also very rich, which introduces the possibility of pay to win, or cheating. I don't like those.
The Bolink (RJ Speed) Pan Car Option:
Entry cost: $390
Pros: In production, pre-existing parts support, can move onto other pan car classes.
Cons: Not a good investment.
I'm considering the Digger type chassis as a "pan car" chassis. RJ speed has several cars that have either no suspension, or kingpin and flex plate alone.
Pan cars are great, in that there's not a whole lot to do to them. You can smear some grease on the kingpins, you can change the grease on the damper pad. Perhaps you've got one big shock to handle most of the chassis load.
Costs for racing a pan car: $160 car, $20 servo, $30 ESC, $12 motor, $30 battery, $100 radio. And if the stock tires aren't the class tires, we're down out to about $400.
Now this isn't a good investment, because pan cars have moved on, and now have shocks, upper control arms, and various other suspension setups. The old flex plates are dead tech. While technically legal for the classes, they aren't competitive.
Are there cheaper chassis out there? Parma used to sell a super simple chassis...
Whatever your option is:
You tell me, I can't say I know the whole industry. What is out there that's 1/10, hobby grade and cheap?