Did you have a radio controlled car when you were a kid? They always looked like a ton of fun in the television commercials during Saturday Morning Cartoons, but when you finally convinced your parents to buy one they were typically slow and got pretty boring after 30 minutes. And batteries were always sold separately. Would an RC car be more fun if it was 1,600 pounds and had 61 horsepower? Former Jalop Superfast Matt wanted to find out, and he’s a slightly obsessive engineer, so he built one.
Considering the amount of money and effort that went into RC-ifying this Smart, it almost definitely wasn’t worth doing. But that didn’t stop Matt from building a contraption that turns the steering wheel, pushes the brakes and actuates the throttle well enough to remotely drive the car. In the process of getting this car to move he burned a few pricey servo motors and still didn’t have enough leverage or power to go full-throttle, but the car did drive around the desert for a bit without anybody inside it, so the project was a moderate success. It made an entertaining YouTube video, anyway, and that was the goal.
Are you going to turn your daily driver into a desert-ripping giant Tamiya any time soon? Watch this video to see if it’s something you’re actually interested in, or if it’s just a thing that sounds cool in theory. When I first saw the thumbnail of this video pop up on YouTube I was instantly daydreaming about bodging together a set of controls for my off-roady Porsche Cayenne, but after watching I’m pretty sure it’s just another project I would never finish and would get bored of as quickly as I did when I was a kid.
