I purchased a Kyosho Inferno VE RTR about a week ago.
First run I was just playing around in the driveway and all went well.

Second run I went down to a local road track with a mate (who also purchased a VE from you a week before), fitted road wheels, and hammered around for a long time (great battery life!)
Eventually the batteries must have been exhausted (2x 5200mAh LiPo) and the car braked to a stop. At that point I thought everything was fine.
Later I borrowed a pair of batteries from my mate and tried them out - motor wouldn't run for more than a clunk. I figured the batteries were flat - turns out I was wrong.
Anyway I went to try the car this morning, after charging my batteries last night.
Same problem - the ESC goes through it's startup sequence ok, but when I try the throttle, it dies. The ESC reboots at this point so there's obviously something wrong. This morning I had it connected for maybe 15s and it started making a strange noise - whining - so I disconnected everything. The motor, ESC, battery, and wires had all become hot in less than 15s!
I was wondering
(a) if anyone knows what might be wrong?
(b) why it might have happened - only second run of the car :-(

It uses a Team Orion Vortex 8 ESC/550 motor combo.
At the end of the run the motor seemed hot, but not incredibly hot.
It was a reasonably long run, mostly not at full speed (tight road track!) but nothing seemed very hot.