The Exceed Forza was our first car. Much like everyone else, the price is what lured me. i.e. Why spend $400 if your unsure how much enjoyment you will get out of 'the hobby'?
To that end....it's a good car for those wanting to LEARN about nitro rc cars. The car
can move and is quite agile (I ran it with a friend's Rustler the other day and it held its own). Of course, as others have mentioned....it's not extremely durable, and if things DO go wrong, obtaining parts will be difficult, and obtaining parts for the VX.18 will be extremely difficult if not impossible. However, as with anything, with maintenance it can be a 'decent' car for the price.
The problem is most folks who purchase it are new to 'the hobby' and end up effing something up (see
here). At the point you are faced with two choices: 1) roll your sleeves up and begin learning how to maintain a nitro rc car, or 2) cut your $150.00 loss and move on.
Either way you will be doing #1 regardless of your vehicle's cost if you continue to enjoy nitro rc cars-and I for one am hooked line and sinker! I've done so much to our Forza it's not even funny, and each day I continue to learn things. I guess subconciously I'm apt to completely tear down a $150.00 car and not worry about making mistakes, as
that is what I'm using the car for (simply as a learning tool). Even now I'm going to change the spur gear on it, and have little-to-no-idea how to do it, but I will learn.
With all this said, I can still recommend the Forza to any newbie, as long as they know they will need to perform quite a bit of maintenance on it and search high and low for specific parts. But when you get it going...it's actually a decent ride.
I have an OFNA Hyper 7 (I paid $279 for it) on the way this week....and I am going to order an HPI Trophy 3.5 (I think) this week. If there are things I'm tentative about modifying on these two, I'llexperiment/learn on the Forzafirst...thatis the biggest value I'm obtaining from it.
Of course, if you are already astute with maintaining nitro rc cars, ignore everything I just said. ;-)