Best High-End RC Cars 2021

For most car enthusiasts, there are plenty of awesome cars that will be forever out of reach, thanks to the sky-high prices such machines often sell for. Often the most you can hope for is to get a picture with one or to see them drive past. Remote control cars offer an excellent opportunity to get to both see and drive the cars you want, just scaled down. Thankfully, this also scales down the price, making RC cars a much more affordable hobby.

While there are many things that RC car enthusiasts like doing, one of the most common pastimes is racing. Of course, when driving fast, you can also crash fast and break things. Due to the reduced size and the material choices of RC cars, repairs are often simple and affordable, compared to crashing a real car. Speed isn’t necessarily everything though, handling and stability are important too, as is the ability to drive on and off-road, if that’s what you want to do.

There’s a huge range of RC cars out there, but to help you find some of the best out there, we’ve drawn up our list of the best high-end RC cars in 2021.

The Traxxas Maxx is a 1/10 scale car with an impressive 60mph top speed. The 4×4 makes it suitable to drive on all sorts of easy terrain, be it road, sand or dirt, though nothing too strenuous. The Maxx isn’t ideal for heavy off-roading, but it is waterproof, so you can cross puddles and (very) shallow streams with it!

The Maxx is a great choice for beginners or older kids – the solid build quality and easy availability of replacement parts means that it’s difficult to break and easy to repair. The high-top speed does mean that absolute beginners and younger kids might want to steer clear. The raw power can make this a difficult beast to handle, but the suspension generally keeps it gripping. If you do manage to flip the Maxx, the self-righting feature should allow you to flip it without having to run over.

The Traxxas XO-1 holds the record for the fastest production RC car thanks to its frankly insane top speed in excess of 100mph. If you want to go any faster than that your only choice is to build your own. One thing to note is that to reach the top speed you’ll need to change the gearing to the included alternate gearing. The tires that come with it are designed to handle speeds of up to 118mph so will be ready for you to gun it.

The one-seventh scale XO-1 features a functional aero package to help keep it planted at high speeds. 60mph can be reached in 2.3 seconds with 100mph taking just 4.9 seconds thanks to a four-wheel-drive system and Traxxas’ traction control system. It should be noted that at high speed, crashes will involve enough force to damage the car as well as anything it hits, great care should be taken to avoid high speeds around people and breakable things. Finally, as with many high-end RC cars, batteries are not included and will add more to the already high price tag.

The Mugen Seiki MTX7 isn’t a ready-to-race RC car at all, in fact, it’s a kit RC car. In practice this means you get a chassis, suspension, and a drive train. To complete the kit you will need to provide and install a radio and receiver, engine and exhaust, steering and throttle servo, receiver batteries, wheels and tires, body and paint, starter box and glow ignitor, and of course, glow fuel.

For some this level of customisation may be too intimidating, but for others, it may be the core of the fun of the hobby. It’s designed to fit a “nitro” engine which will please many petrol heads and makes it stand out from other battery-powered RC cars. The price tag of the kit alone is extremely high, just shy of a grand. The fact that more money needs to be spent to complete it will limit the appeal to those not willing to shell out a lot of money.

The Tamiya Lancia Delta Integrale is a 1/10 scale kit RC car. Its key selling point is the accurately reproduced bodywork of the legendary rally car as well as a sticker set to recreate the iconic Martini Racing stripes livery. The front-mounted motor, four-wheel-drive system, and rally block tires help it to handle like the real thing too.

Being a kit RC car, assembly is required, though this is part of the fun. The bodywork comes unpainted, and no paint is included. This does mean you can paint it your colour of preference, but that does somewhat defeat the replica aesthetic. The sticker pack again allows you to change the appearance, but you only get one set, so you need to be very careful applying them.

The Arrma Typhon 4WD BLX Buggy is a ready-to-run four-wheel-drive speed machine. It has a top speed of 70 miles per hour and thanks to some robust suspension and treaded tires can perform well on or off-road. As with many high-end RC cars the top speed can only be reached if you change out the gearing. Unlike many RC cars, the Typhon actually includes the necessary gear.

The transmitter and receiver are included and can be configured to use one of three channels. The only extra things you need to provide are the batteries for the car and the controller, and a charger for the car battery. While the design is aggressive, it does leave the suspension fairly exposed and potentially vulnerable in an accident.

That was our round-up of the best high-end RC cars in 2021. Have you recently bought a high-end RC car? What sold you on it and what has your experience been with it so far? Let us know down below.