RE: Durable, waterproof, tough bashers. Alternatives?
if you want continuous fun nitro is the way to go, yes you can get a field charger and $500 worth of batteries, but nitro is the better and more affordable choice (nitro isn't so daunting, lots of people ran them until they got wussified by brushless, wimps.)
1/8 nitro OFNA is going to be the best deal, most durable and most powerful nitro out there.
by the way, you can buy traxxas, futaba or hitec waterproof servo's and put the RX in a zip tied balloon, also, traxxas isn't that water proof, I have seen MANY MANY MANY with blown out ESC's from a little splash. nitro is more water resistant than electric in my opinion, as long as you don't submerge it its not going to care, and even most servo's will handle snow and little splashes, heck I ran my crappy little t-maxx in the snow with regular old servo's for a whole 2 months and the servo's worked fine till the day I sold it.
the hpi bullet is a good truck, the savage X is a great truck (XS and XL not as good) the MGT 8.0 is a killer truck.
and actually, I find nitro to be pretty simple to maintain, change the plug every gallon, shoes last 3 gallons or so (usually) and tune it within 1/4 turn once a day. Tracking down a electrical problem on a electric car usually requires replacement of a motor, esc (or both) or battery, none of them cheap, its also VERY expensive to get started for extended periods of running, and you have to give the ESC and motor a time to rest, nitro, you just fill it up and take off again.