Originally Posted by Bishop

I'm actually not all that sure myself, after looking around more I think we are being stitched up just a little on parts pricing, relative to the original kit cost at least for sure...

Fast // Cheap // Durable - Pick any two?, kind of falls apart if you want to base that off the Photon original kit price.

It's not something I noticed when I bought my Photon, all I saw was the really cheap kit price compared to Xray/Tamiya/Shu etc, then loved how it was built and went, but a few things made me go hmm over time.

One of those hmm moments was like the alloy battery mounts, ok I love mine (and they are cool), but then all the other brands came up with their own simple versions recently, all work quite well, except ours cost $20 per mount (TOP should at least make a cheaper plastic/carbon version).

More recent moment was looking at the chassis prices, a year back when the lipo chassis was new (and TOP was near the only brand around with a lipo dedicated chassis), $90+ looked ok, a fair bit later and it's never come down in price, a TC6 chassis is $60, hell a Tamiya 417 chassis is $70.

Only other car in the $90 chassis range is Xray (and Yoko, though I just checked an $83 for the BD5 lipo), and everyone seems to complain Xray gear is expensive, which brings me to the 'big' hmm, I seriously went looking today, and dudes we are paying Xray/Yoko prices for our Top parts, seriously, our kit is bottom 3 to buy, parts though are top 3 in cost?.

Don't get all that in the wrong way either, it's just my rainy day bored observation while net shopping, I like so much about the car, just I can't honestly recommend it as something cheap anymore, and if it comes time for something new (or a chassis change), maybe I'll look at something else.