Fast RC Cars

If you're looking for fast RC cars, you're probably going to have to move into Nitro or gasoline fueled cars to get the really fast speeds. Both of these engines will go much faster than your standard electric radio controlled car, although even those are capable of reaching impressive speeds if you buy the right car.

What you need to keep an eye out for is scale speed versus actual speed. Most speeds you'll see in the advertisements for RC cars are scale speeds, which is the speed the car would be going if the car were actual size.

For instance a 1/10th scale car that is advertised as being able to reach speeds of 100 miles per hour is actually only going to be going 10 miles per hour. You need to keep that in mind when comparing speeds, because some RC cars are capable of going very, very fast in actual, not scale MPH.

Generally speaking, the top speed you're going to find with most out of the box fast RC cars is going to be around 70 miles per hour in actual speed, which is pretty impressive when you consider that works out to a scale speed that is just slightly slower than the speed of sound.

RC cars are actually capable of going even faster than this, up to and including breaking into the triple digits in actual speeds, but those kinds of speeds are limited to drag racers and other heavily modified cars. The most basic way to move up in speed is to switch from toy grade RC cars, which is what you'll find in most toy stores, up into hobby grades. The hobby grade cars are built much sturdier and are much more powerful that the toy grade ones but they are, of course, more expensive.

If you're really looking for the truly fast RC cars, you're going to be looking at the Nitro powered cars. These cars have an actual engine that runs on a special fuel called Nitro, which is alcohol based and available at any good hobby shop, which allows them to get to those top speeds.