AKMopar,
As any RC product you buy, they will each have their own pros and cons. In the two years that I have had the Pershing and King Tiger, the only problems that I have had with breakdowns was due to my carelessness. Wear and tear will affect any RC tank but the other breakdown issues, from my experience, is due to the end user. Every part, which is few, that I have replaced was due to my negligence, ie. running it into a door, hockey bag, rolled it once and ran it on a stony terrain that is not recommended. You will occasionally get a part that maybe defective straight out of the box. Tamiya's customer service is excellent. They will replace a part that you feel is defective as long as the user did not create it. I had done this with the turret rotation unit on my King. I had just put it together and realized that the clutch in the unit was defective and called Tamiya and they said to mail it in and that they would replace it as long as I didn’t ruin it myself. Of the two tanks I have, I would say that I am very very happy with them. If you have a part that is broken in one of the pre-assembled tanks, it maybe harder to replace that part and the tank maybe a wash. At least with Tamiya, you can replace any part. I had gone about a year before any part on the two tanks broke that I had caused. I had a Ripmax Abrams 1/16 tank and I was very disappointed. It could not do a third of the stuff the Tamiya tanks can. Granted the tank only cost me about 130, it was a 130-dollar disappointment. It could only run on smooth surfaces and it did not have suspension.
You will really enjoy any Tamiya tank, I quaretee it.