Originally Posted by
Jon Kerr
This is the big problem. Nitro didn't hurt the hobby. The sales people in the hobby stores have hurt the hobby....
Odd, I work in a hobby shop and we do our best to discourage new bloods from going nitro and less than 1 in 10 wind up heeding our advice, no matter how strongly we recommend otherwise. In the vast majority of cases, the only way to avoid selling a new guy nitro would be to refuse to sell it to them. Putting nitro in the hands of rookies is like falling off a greased stump, all we have to do is have it on the shelf and it's a done deal. It takes a lot of convincing to get a newbie to change their mind about electric versus nitro because they have been led to believe by ads from the car makers that nitro is faster (and also ups the cool factor of it's owner) and that's all 99.999% of first timers are interested in is how fast it is out of the box? The second most asked newb question is "will it do a wheelie"?
R/C car makers are by far the single most influential factor in a rookies first car buying decision. I can't tell you how many kids (between the ages of 12 and 50) have come in to our store with a magazine opened to the HPI ad depicting a savage at what appears to be 30 feet off the ground, wanting one just like it.
From my side of the counter it's a macho thing for first time buyers who perceive electric as not as bad ass as nitro. The people who walk in and ask what is the best beginners car are no problem because they actually want something easy to learn on, but they are so few and far between it's like a doo-doo bird sighting when one comes through the door.
Until you've tried to convince a 9 year old a JATO is too much car for him while grandma pats her foot, impatient to write the check and be on her way, you should be more careful making blanket statements about where the fault lies that so many rookies wind up with nitro.