2. Agree people act like tuning a nitro is like performing a quadruple bypass surgery. While its not hard I will say its not for everyone.

3. Well cheaper is better(to an extent)

4. Well yes... but Nitro really hasn't had any advancements for awhile. The biggest advancement was the Savage Octane where it uses gas in a nitro sized motor, but even that they don't seem to be trying to scale it down, or make conversions for other RC's. You can also blame the price of nitro, and the difficulty to get it in some places.

5. Yes a lot of Hobby shops have closed as they can't compete with places like tower, and other big hobby sites in pricing. Also as there are now so many models out they can't stock all the parts so they have to order them usually from tower. For instance the LHS that shut down a year or so ago by me was the biggest one in like 25 miles. Their stock was abysmal for parts they didn't even stock parts for most things they sold so they had to order the parts. Why would I pay $0.50-$30 more(plus tax) for them to get me something, and have to blow 2 gallons of gas(round trip) to pick up a part(after I blow 2 gallons to go there to be told they don't got it) where it could be ordered online, and shipped straight to the house usually faster then the shop could get it.

Then there is the lack of tracks, and places to drive for some. Like in my case the city I live in pretty much closed down the only park that is relatively safe that is close by to build another school(they have at LEAST 5 within 3 blocks...), and as the closest tracks are around 2 hour drives away, and open when I'm at work I kinda fell out of the hobby, and don't buy anything new. I actually have 2 RC's I've never got to full speed as there is no where I can find that has enough room to run them lol


Kyosho wasn't pulled due to cost
I think it was due to them wanting to distribute the RC's themselves cutting out the middleman. I could be wrong on this I remember reading something a few years back when they did it.

As for speed now they just have to put fast, stupid fast, or ludicrously fast as people have got RC's going over 100Mph. I think the only things that don't easily go over 40 are the cheap brushed models(which can usually be made to VERY easily), crawlers, and scalers.