Whether or not 1/8th scale kit cars are designed to be bashers is irrelevant. 1/8 scale buggy/truggy kit cars can still take more abuse than pretty much anything on the market.

This is the reason I built a basher buggy. I bought a losi 8ight e 3.0 roller used from this site. I bought a castle sensorless setup(as they didn't sell sensored motors at the time) a 80 dollar waterproof servo and for about 550 bucks had a RTR basher buggy. I have jumped it, raced it, crashed it, nose dived it on 25+ft jumps... the only thing I have ever broken was a spur gear, the battery tray(from a huge nose dive which resulted in the entire battery coming out) and stripped out a turnbuckle.

And if you want speed I can swap out the pinion and spur, put 6s in it and hit 100mph.