Judging by the lead image alone, you might be tempted to say this is a clickbait headline and article. However, what you are about to see in the video at the top of this page is indeed a radio-controlled scale model of a Volvo military vehicle. And it’s doing an amazing job at crawling little rocks at what looks to be a special playground for scale models.
If you are wondering what’s the model of this Volvo, here’s a little background. This is what the Swedish brand produced as the Cross Country C303, a family of military vehicles developed in the late 1960s. Production started in 1974 with two versions available – 4x4 and a 6x6 – with the one from the video obviously being from the four-wheel type.
Some versions of the C303 were sold to civilian customers and were used as vehicles for special services. In 1983, an example of the Volvo truck even won the Paris-Dakar rally in the class for trucks under 10 tonnes. In total, 8,718 vehicles were assembled, roughly 75 percent of which were delivered to provide different military services. The remaining number was sold to private customers.
Powering the military Volvo truck was a 3.0-liter V6 engine sourced from Volvo’s passenger cars. The output of this engine was 125 horsepower (93 kilowatts) in standard form, though the truck used a slightly detuned version with 117 hp (87 kW). Respectively, the maximum torque dropped from 165 pound-feet (224 Newton-meters) to 152 lb-ft (206 Nm) in the military version.
The C303 family had a massive ground clearance, very similar to those of the legendary Mercedes-Benz Unimog. In addition, portal axles with locking differentials resulted in an outstanding off-road performance. As you can see from the video, the same off-road prowess can be achieved from a detailed scaled replica of the truck.
