ORIGINAL: MrN8
ORIGINAL: chrobar
If your not gonna be racing, the traxxas nitro sport or rustler are great beginner trucks.
As someone who's not a beginner and owns a Rustler, I'd say look elsewhere.
Nitro sport and rustlers are terrible to start out with. After having both of them driven, i'd pick up a tower hobbies ST-15 before I'd go traxxas. Let me start with all the weaknesses on the rusty/sport:
Weak shocks, and they are common to leak
cheap driveshafts. they always break or fall apart.
Extremely finicky engine. terrible engine for a new person to the hobby.
Radio gear is way below par of today's RTR vehicles.
Transmission is weak. You'll find that the gears tend to separate from where they are supposed to be. thus ending up with a chipped gear in the tranny.
Suspension arms are of a cheap quality plastic.
And thats just a small list of things that need to be improved. For the price you pay to get one of these, its ridiculous. For the "quality" that the rustler is, you SHOULD be able to buy a nitro rustler at 150-200 bucks. But, traxxas would rather disagree.