Well I figured since I got the Evo 3 Surikarn to compare to the R2, I'll let you guys know what I think.
So far, I have only run a stock motor in the Evo 3, with a bone stock setup for the first day, trying to see how the car handles. The car definately has less roll in stock form, but when I lengthened the rear camber links to get more roll, the car just got extremely loose, undriviable actually.
I ran into the front ring gear problem, stripped 2 of them, although I was told of a possible way to solve the problem, which I will try this next week, with a BL motor.
First impressions is it's a very nice car, with very similar handling to the R2, some things are very easy to work on, but others are hard (the upper deck has 14 screws!) I put Acer ceramic bearings in the car, so the drivetrain was definately more free than the R2, it spun for 16 seconds before I even broke it in... Besides the ring gear problem, the car is very durable, didn't break any other parts than that, but I did get hit pretty hard one time, and it sent the car out of tweak to where I could barely drive it (actually pulled out of the main it was so undriviable)
I'll see how it goes next week, from what I've been told, it reacts to changes very similar to how the R2 does, so I should be able to find a setup pretty quickly for it.