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Four-year-old demonstrates truck durability

Volvo Trucks has released the latest in its Live Test series of short films, which – according to the company – “show how various technical features in our trucks are tested in a spectacular and entertaining way”.

Filmed in Serbia within a closed-off gravel pit, the “Look Who’s Driving” video shows a four-year-old girl named Sophie driving an 18-tonne Volvo FMX off-road truck through a construction area via remote control.

The FMX truck was launched in Australia in May 2011 but was recently upgraded to include several new functions.

{{image2-a:r-w:200}}“To show what the truck can do, we want to give it a real challenge,” Volvo Trucks vice president Ricard Fritz said. “What test driver is more reckless than an unpredictable four-year-old?”

Over the course of the video, Sophie subjects the truck to a number of trials, including driving the vehicle through water, making it do “donuts”, smashing it into an empty building, and causing it to roll 360 degrees from the top of a steep, soft-ground slope.

“The test demonstrates beyond question the ability of the truck to cope with the most extreme environments,” Volvo Trucks launch manager Gunnar Eliasson commented. “To help it do so, it has functions such as the new automatic traction control keeping it going, even on severely sloping and soft surfaces. They also demonstrate [in the film] its total strength with an unbeatable cabin design with sturdy front corners and a reinforced sub-frame.”

As previously reported by Quarry, the FMX can be adapted as a cost-effective alternative to a dump truck with the addition of the 6 x 4 tipper body option. According to Volvo Trucks, there is also potential to upscale the body and bin size to suit individual requirements. 

Volvo Trucks has carried out a number of other marketing stunts in the past as part of its Live Test series, including using a hamster to steer the FMX truck to show how easy it is to drive, and having actor and stuntman Jean-Claude Van Damme perform the splits between two reversing trucks to demonstrate the stability and precision of its Dynamic Steering technology.
 

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