Ben, firstly welcome back. You will be pleased to know Phil is still racing at the very top level and still helping people out.
Right back on topic, everyman and his dog will be along in a moment to tell you why the car / motor / ESC radio etc. they run is the best, looks like I might be first.
So ... go and buy a
Kyosho ZX5-FS2 (4wd) and an
RB5-SP2 (2wd) and maybe a Scorpion covnersion to make the RB5 mid motored. The Kysoho guys are super friendly and helpful and will all poor help and information on you until you scream for us to stop!!!
The cars are genuinely open the box and build solutions, no options required sort of cars ... nothing worse than buying your car to find out your leaving half of it in the box and buying ££££s of "must have options".
Both cars are easy to setup and nice and neutral to drive, very strong and super reliable ... what more could you ask for? You want pretty .... hey, they do pretty just fine
Right now that is out of the way .....
Try all the different cars and see what suits you best (don't be suprised if it's the Kyoshos though
) and then look at spares back up, trackside set up help and so on. Most people will be more than happy for you to try their favourite brand of car so long as you can be seen to get your own car around the track ok, just ask.
Another good tip is to look at the threads in the various sections here and see how many have titles contain the words "failure", "problem", "HELP NEEDED" etc. Don't bother looking for the ones that have titles like "Best car ever" as many more people start threads when they are fed up or need help than to shower praise on a car, just human nature. That will tell you which cars have the issues and which haven't.
The important thing there is SUITS YOU. RC is a very fasion led sport and although there aren't any "bad" competition cars out there some people will tell you that X is better than Y because its what So&So used to win the Xchampionship ... truth is that So&So would win with the box your car arrived in!
Back to your question about why so many CR2s are for sale well I guess it's for 3 reasons
1) a lot of people change cars this time of year because the fancy something new
2) many supported drivers have their new equipment and are selling on last years
3) because there is the new Tamiya TRF201 based Atomic Carbon car (201GTO I think) and the AC fans will want that so are selling their CR2s to make way much as they probably sold their S2s previously.
From what I have seen of the CR2 it looks a vey good car, not good enough to tempt me personally away from Kyosho but it's certainly still competative. Mid motored cars are very easy to drive when the grip is high, the really good ones are still great when the grip drops.
The other thing I would suggest is finding a decent shop and sticking with them. They will know what is hot and what is not, also they will be happy to help their regular customers. I always recomend the shops that take the time to come on the forums and offer their experience and knowledge freely.
JE Spares have proved to be amazing since I started using them, nothing is ever any trouble and I've had stuff arrive in impossible time scales.
Others to consider are MK Racing and DMS along with Concept Racing, all those guys can be found on here regularly.
Whatever you do have fun. See you trackside.