Friends and i built electric 1/10 scale dragsters over 20 years ago, and they were a blast. The problem is that you have to have someone that also has one. I still have mine !!
We built these in the early 90's when RC stuff was still fairly basic. We used RC-10 motors and Makita Ni-Cad batteries. They were fairly quick for being home built, mainly because they were very light. They would be a different animal if we had brushless motors and Li-Po batteries available today.