I say build it yourself.

Every RTR I have bought required a tear down and rebuild. I'm not knocking the quality of every manufacturer but there seems to be a huge difference in build quality. You think you save time but in reality it more than doubles the kit build time. Finally, you end up replacing the motor, tires, electronics and body once you get serious and race often.

I made a mistake of not tearing one down all the way since the diffs felt fine only to DNF due to one shim missing to set the mesh. Sure the part was cheap but the drive to the track, entry fee and the other costs would have been worth the time to take it down to the bare chassis.

Even my Kyosho Ultima SC RTR bombed out the first time out due to the gear slipping on the top shaft (manufacturing oops) and the shock caps blowing off. This is with a highly regarded company too.

It is getting harder to find good entry level kits anymore but that's how the market is and we need to adapt.

Bottom line is that for bashing the RTRs are great, for racing they're not so good out of the box. However, the manufacturers know that 95% of their business are the bashers so that's what we get.