We love the stunts Volvo Trucks sets up to promote its vehicles. We know they're publicity stunts, but that doesn't keep us from enjoying them. Because they're really crazy.
On the off chance that you missed their latest viral creation, we - and pretty much everyone in the entire world - reported on it. About a week and 7.5 million views later, Volvo is back to tell us how it set up the stunt in which adorable 4-year-old Sophie has the time of her life with a remote-controlled FMX truck.
Before we go on about the newly-released behind-the-scenes videos, let's just get one obvious thing out of the way first: of course there were two remotes. But Volvo swears the second one was put in the engineers' hands just for safety reasons. Rigging the truck and fine-tuning the remote control system took months. It involved pneumatics, electronic servos, and plates fitted to the pedals to give very precise control.
Let's be honest here. There's not one of us - and we bet not one of you, either - who wouldn't have loved to be in Sophie's shoes. Especially when her mom says "I think you're allowed to hit the house with the car." Whaaat?! Grown men here at autoevolution would have giggled like little girls if they were told such a thing.
We really laughed out loud when Sophie described how she was going to drive the FMX and said, "I'm not gonna let it crash." Right. We believe you, honey. Nobody wanted to see that thing crash. Mhm. As much as we loved Sophie, we cringed each time her mom called the 18-ton truck "car."
Completely unrelated but somewhat ironic: Volvo drove Sophie and her mom down to the test site in a Mercedes-Benz van. The three-pointed star is clearly visible on the steering wheel, in the first shot of one of the videos, and then you can briefly see the whole vehicle when they arrive.
Volvo Trucks launched its crazy stunts series - actually called Live Test Series - in 2012, and the videos have gathered over 100 million views on YouTube.
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