Its really not bad right out of the box once you upgrade the steering servo. The motor is not the big power house racing motor but its not bad and its pretty easy to tune. Later you will probably want to replace the grease in the diffs with oil but its not a big deal. I ran mine a long time with the grease. Really the main upgrades at first are the steering servo and get a receiver battery pack. It will up the power of the servos and save you money on batts. Those akalines dont last long and get expensive really quick.