The Grand Tour Top Gear

The RC Toybota is back for the ultimate challenge!

Some of you might recall a story we reported on last week about a man who built a scaled down remote-controlled version of Jeremy Clarkson’s Toybota from Top Gear.

In true Top Gear form, Aaron Bidochka from RCSparks Studio put his RC Toybota up against the ultimate challenge – crossing the English Channel. Well, at least a scaled down version of it, otherwise known as a giant water hole located near his home. In Canada. But just like on Top Gear, it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

On the first attempt, the 1:10 scale Toybota started taking on water in the rear tray, and even suffered from electrical issues which resulted in the outboard motor losing power. “It was uncanny how many things actually turned out to be like the first Toybota episode,” Bidocka said, after he was forced to abort the challenge and drive (sail?) the truck back to shore relying on propulsion from the spinning tyres alone.

Following his failed attempt, Bidochka hauled his model Toybota back to the shed and made a few key changes, including a few electrical fixes, adjustment of the outboard motor angle, and the inclusion of a new ‘water cannon’ to forcibly remove any water which managed to make its way into the rear tray. The cannon shoots the water about 4.5 metres (15 feet) away from the vehicle, which is the equivalent of 45 metres (150 feet) at full scale. We think Clarkson would approve of this and would have no doubt used it to attack Richard Hammond or James May.

Riding on a wave of confidence, Bidochka returned to the waterhole with his newly refined Toybota (Nissank?) for one last crack at the challenge. Despite the addition of foam for extra buoyancy, he revealed the RC Toybota still has a tendency to ‘plow’ underwater when too much throttle is applied. There’s simply no getting away from the fact that a car isn’t designed to travel through water smoothly, meaning very delicate throttle control would be required to keep it under control.

So was the RC Toybota able to successfully cross the channel second time ’round? Check out the video at the top of the page to see what happened!

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1 comment

RCSparks Studio September 19, 2017 at 10:03 am

Hello Motoring Box!

Wow, what an awesome set of articles. Thank you so much! This project was so much fun to showcase for everyone! I always knew this would be a possible thing to do, and have wanted to try it for years, ever since the episodes were first released on Top Gear. Finally, I was able to source all the parts I needed.. and the Toysank was my attempt! haha.. A Mix of the Toybota and Nissank. Jeremy Clarkson, if you ever read this –
Thank you for all of the inspiration over the years!

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