@Turtle24 when people talk about cars in this price range, at least here in Australia, there's discounted Tamiya XBs for which you then need to go out straight away and buy bearings and maybe a couple more hop-ups, as well as a battery and a charger; and then there's the
Boost, which comes with everything you need in one box and is ROAR legal, meaning you can start out bashing and progress through to club-racing, all on the one car.
They probably don't resell for super high prices but then I haven't seen any listed yet; but for the price you can't beat 'em. The Spektrum DX2e is a nice transmitter (very nice in fact, for a basic) and the stock gear is pretty decent. They have an excellent online community both here and elsewhere and ECX as a brand seems to be moving from strength to strength.
I mean if you aren't after a buggy, there are other options out there. But if you want to just cut your teeth, I don't think the ECX Boost is anything like a
mistake. It's pretty darn fun!
Edit: And, in stock form it's bleedin' bulletproof. I have made so many n00b errors, and I was so sure it was going to punish me for them - -
nope! It keeps coming back for more.
Edit 2 (answer the dern question edition):
...how is it for handling a track...
So far it's been great! It jumps flat (really flat) and it's good through the corners, the stock steering geometry helps out there. Although I will say, BigSquid joked that you could measure the stock servo traverse time with a sundial, and they're not wrong. It's slow. I mean, it turns well and fast enough for bashing, but there's a lot of pre-empting involved if you're going to drift successfully. It'd need upgrades to be a
stock-class racer but not too much more than 17.5 brushless and ESC, LiPo, turnbuckles and a servo.
This is just prior to heading to a local indoor track for practice. It looked considerably less Shiny afterwards! 
