When i was in the same situation as you I was told the Hyper 7 was the best to buy.
So I bought the hyper 7 21 tq sport for 169.99 from modelsport in march 2008, since then I have been to races almost every sunday and bashed it loads in my garden.
When I first got it I was shocked at the setup, there was virtually no oil in the shocks and the whole thing was leaning to the engine side, also all the diffs had the same rubbish grease. So after some quality oils in the diffs and the shocks and spacers to balance it, it felt and looked much better.
At the track it was incredible, i was able to keep up with guys using OS max v spec engines (that cost more than my car!!) as wells as £300+ pro buggies such as xrays, hong nor xcr1 etc....
In fact i posted the 3rd or fourth fastest time on the track!
However it is breakable sadly, I had to change the pull start 3 times and ended up buying a starter box, then the engine borke (the front bearing broke and that damaged the engine internals) also i broke a few front hubs and knuckles in extreme crashes.
It seems to me from the other newbies who had bought the hong nor lx one were slighltly better off in terms of toughness as their cars hardly ever had any problems, but definitely the hyper 7 21 is faster!
So all in all it is an ok car, I hope this rant has help
