I've seen receiver packs as light as 20g so I don't see what the fuss is about running one. The flexibility in placing it for ballast would probably be welcome.
I'm running a Tekin RS ESC in my touring car and have the Hotwire programming interface. It looks like this would be a great ESC for 12th scale BL/lipo as it has lipo cutoffs for 1S, 2S, and 3S packs. You can also choose from 5 throttle profiles (and create custom ones soon) and change drag brake, current limit, etc., all of which may be key in such a lightweight platform.