[bender]

This is quite a difficult question to answer, as often a successful car in one continent didn't necessarily mean it would work well everywhere else.

The Optima is a prime example of this - in Europe this car ended the reign of the 2wd (before the classes were split), most notably at the 86 Euro's, where Jamie Booth was the lone RC10 (10th) in a field of 8 Optimas and 1 SG Coyote.

However locally for me (Australia), the Optima was completely outclassed by a buggy released in 1985, the Mugen Bulldog. This was simply because a local distributor developed some excellent mods for this car which saw it completely dominate our racing scene for several years, and was even competitive against the Cat.

Outside Australia, the Bulldog was probably an almost unhead of car.

For me, the best cars are the one which were innovative for their time, such as:

83 Hirobo 44b
84 RC10
85 Bulldog
86 Incident
86 Cat
89 JRX2
93 Losi XX
94 Yok YZ10
97 Losi XX4