Growing up in South Africa back in the early 70's I'd done some control line flying with simple planes with a baby-bee (Cox 0.49cc engine) and after a while got into gliders (mainly because they were cheaper than planes) and spent a year or so "soaring" but one day in a thunderstorm I had to ditch a glider I'd spent perhaps 60 hours building... at that point I deceided to find something less expensive on the heart..
I tried sailboats, but they were too slow, and around '77 or '78 Associated produced one of their early versions, a 1/12th RWD pan car which we raced on car parks everywhere. It it's day it was only ever beaten by the Graupner FWD.
In those days, chargers were resistance wires and you timed the charge from your motor car battery with an egg timer...the "esc" was a ceramic resister wire...and pinions didn't have grub screws... you hammered them on and used a gear puller to remove...happy days
Tyres were hard or harder and lasted months, even on tarmac...