my first serious RC racer was an AE 12I. That sucker went undefeated for about 2 years. But there's an explaination for it's unprecidented success......back in the day, nobody (including me) knew anything about RC or especially RC racing rules. On the day that I purchased the AE car, the local hobby shop had only 7 cell stick pack batterys in stock. 7 cell packs were only a couple of bucks more than a 6 cell pack, and the shop had them in stock. Even better, the salesman advised that 7cell battery packs were a little faster and they would also provide a little more run time. And they did fit in the car (barely). So, what the hell. My first on-road RC racer was a 7cell 12I. To make it even more interesting, I ran it with a mild modified motor........again on the advice of the hobby shop sales guy. Like I said, nobody knew what the heck we were doing. As one can imagine, my mod 7cell 12I was one rocket of a racecar. Nobody local (including me) knew that my super mod 7 cell mod 12I was illegal as hell. No wonder it went undefeated for so long............I kicked everybody's butt every week and until the local club discovered that there were indeed actual rules that applied to RC racing. So much for the undefeated streak. From the 12I, it was on to a delta spyder (which I ran on my first trip to Cleveland over 25 years ago), then an AE12L, a corally, back to an AE12L, various newer edition AE Lcars, a speedmerchant, a Darkside, even a slapmaster, eventually I settled on a CRC T-fource, and now finally the trusty CRC GenXL. Gotta love them all. But I must admit that I really miss having twice as much rip and double the run time as the competition. Thems were the days, when we ran whatever we had in the parking lot behind the local hobby store. The faster the better. Rules? What rules?