From Michael James,
Your Guide to Radio Controlled Vehicles.
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There are two speeds associated with radio controlled vehicles: scale speed and actual speed. Some manufacturers, in a bid to capitalize on the perceived superiority of really fast cars, will list the scale speed rather than the actual speed of the RC. It can make a normal car seem faster than it really is.

A. If you clocked a hobby-grade RC vehicle at top speed using a police radar gun, you'd probably get a speed anywhere between 10 to 70 mph. Some dragsters and specially modified RCs can top speeds in excess of 100 mph but that's the exception and not the norm.

Actual Speed

Actual speed is how fast the radio controlled vehicle really goes. Hobby-grade RCs are generally much faster than toy-grade RCs. Although the RC "hall of fame" speed records are held by electric RCs (usually highly modified for increased speed), nitro RCs are fastest overall.

Scale Speed

Scale speed is a measure of how fast the scale model goes in relation to the full size model. A simplified way of looking at it: a 1:10 scale RC would go about 1/10 the speed of the full scale vehicle it's modeled after.

A 1:8 scale RC listed with a scale speed of 110 mph, probably has an actual speed of around 13-14 mph. A 1:64 scale RC, such as Radio Shack Zip Zaps, with a scale speed of 110 mph has an actual speed of about 1.7 mph. There's a big difference between 1.7 and 14 mph even though both vehicles have a scale speed of 110.