@jhautz
The BR50 Trophy from Robitronic also sparked my interest as i run a Robitronic Mantis truggy and do like realistic bodys. Like you mentioned it has the chassis of the mantis truggy but uses the arms/tires of the robitronic Protos buggy. Only a few new parts were used (shocks ...).
Before it was available (Robitronics headquarter is a 5 minute drive from my place) i mixed the truggy and buggy parts myself just to see how the chassis will handle this way.
Pics of this hybrid (truggy+buggy parts):
pic1,
pic2,
pic3
I even made a video of it running on asphalt:
video (had an issue with the front right bone which was too short, the BR50 has cvds)
As i didn't made any shock adjustments and had a somewhat smaller trackwidth as the BR50 Trophy truck it was rather hard to control. The buggy tires had troubles to put the torque to the ground. Nevertheless it was fun to drive. Handled more like my former converted buggy. But when i drove it on gras and rougher terrain it was a bumpy ride. With the truggy arms and tires the chassis was by far more stable. So all in all i would compare its handling to a buggy. Energy consumption also was more like in my brushless buggy (kind of expected as it wheighed way less with the smaller buggy tires).
If the trophy from Robitronic would have bigger tires it would be more appealing to me. With the small buggy tires its offroad capabilities are limited (quite comparable to a 1:8 buggy). The trophy seems to be better suited for race tracks.