Update

Late last week we got the small car's remote hooked up to the parallel port, and some sketchy software controlling it.
We then bought the big car and attempted to run that on the electronics lab's dc power supplies - with mixed sucess. The big car drains about 5-6 amps at 7.2 volts when accellerating on its back (ie. no force against the movement!).
Today (Wednesday week 2) we mostly wasted the day. FICT IT people are a bunch of fucks, and the parts department don't have our parts yet and can't give us an estimate of when they will arrive either.