If you’re a car enthusiast, chances are there was a point in your life when you loved radio-control cars. Heck, you might still love them as an adult. There’s something so deeply satisfying about driving a tiny version of your favorite vehicle. But you, like me, have probably wondered what it would be like to yank out a controller and drive your real car like a cute little RC. As it turns out, you can turn your real car into an RC car, but there are perhaps many reasons why you won’t want to.
This video comes to us from a friend of the show and YouTuber Superfast Matt. Our host, Matt Brown, is an automotive engineer and alongside occasionally penning a great article, he has found himself doing silly projects including building an off-road Dodge Viper, plopping a Tesla drivetrain into a vintage Jaguar, and doing hilariously awful things with a poor Smart Fortwo.
Back in 2021, Matt bought a 2008 to 2010 Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe that didn’t have a single option box checked – yes, I can tell all of that just by looking at a picture — and then proceeded to build a motorcycle carrier on the back of it to use it as a bizarre truck. This was hilarious because he went through some insane work to create this when he could just use his Smart to tow a small utility trailer like I do. Now, Matt’s probably unhappy Smart Fortwo is back for a new project. This one is going to be even more destructive than the last one.
Sorry little car, you’re going to become an RC car now.
Matt’s logic for this project is pretty sound here. Real cars are fun and RC cars are fun, so a real car turned into an RC car should be a blast, right? This isn’t anything new, really. If you’ve watched Top Gear, Fifth Gear, Mythbusters, or any show of that caliber, you’ve seen cars turned into RC cars. In fact, Fifth Gear once turned a Smart into an RC car just so they could plow it into a concrete barrier at 70 mph.
Don’t worry, of course, I have that video right here:
Our video takes us out into the desert because, unlike Tesla, Matt doesn’t want to test his experimental tech on public roads. Matt opens by telling us that Smarts turn sharp, are cheap, and can fit into tiny spaces, but that’s all that’s good about them. I’m just going to move to the next section and ignore my heartache.
Matt is saving the details of the build for a future video. However, he says he converted his Smart into an RC car by using parts similar to what an RC car would have, but big enough to control a real car. A chain-driven motor handles steering while a servo actuates the brakes and another servo acts on the car’s throttle.
The installation of these parts led to a total butchering of the poor Smart’s interior. Much of the dash was ripped out along with the central drive module. Wires are going all over the place and let’s be real, this Smart isn’t going back to stock.
Matt also discovered that the parts he used weren’t really up for the workout of full-size Smart operation. To illustrate what he meant, Matt showed that the $100 servo actuating the throttle died multiple times, including going out in a huge smoke show. What was the problem? Well, the servo was for an RC car and was not meant to be at maximum load for more than perhaps a few seconds at a time. Matt and his crew were basically flooring the car everywhere.
Ignoring that, the steering was a disaster. The Smart Matt used had manual steering and he hooked up a large steering mechanism to control the life-size RC. This turned out to be a pretty big problem. Smarts require more than a full turn of the wheel to go from lock to lock. That’s not something your toy RC car has to worry about. Unfortunately, the servo steering the car just isn’t fast enough. As a result, there is a very long delay between commanding the car to turn a direction and the car actually turning that direction.
The other problem was that it was impossible to use the brakes smoothly. That’s not a problem with the Smart, but with the Frankenstein monster he turned the RC car servos into. The brake servo just punches the brake pedal at full force, slamming the car’s brakes.
All this made for hilarity as the RC Smart was ridiculously horrible to control. If Matt wanted to turn the car to the right, he had to start the turn well in advance of the expected corner entry in order to make it work. There were more laughs when Matt sat in the passenger seat and watched the steering lag in real time.
Even then, the Smart took a brutal battering. Now, I’ve been off-roading Smarts since before such a thing became cool. I can get a stock Smart some pretty far-off places without breaking it. You don’t do it by ramming bushes or launching them off of jumps. If you do, as Matt did, the car will eventually eject its side skirts, the belly pan, and then some of the important components located under the belly pan. With the way they were driving I’m almost surprised they didn’t puncture the plastic fuel tank.
I’m also surprised the clutch didn’t burn from the constant full-throttle starts. But the car was clearly unhappy as its dashboard displayed most of its warning lights in protest.
Matt comes to a reasonable conclusion. This isn’t something you want to do with your own car. The surgery here was clearly incredibly invasive and using RC car parts to turn a real car into an RC car results in a car that’s laggy, unresponsible, and rams everything in its way. At the very least, it’s good for a few laughs before you realize you wasted your time.
If silly antics like these are up your alley, I’d recommend giving Matt’s channel a watch. I’m going to go hug my Smarts tightly and tell them I’d never subject them to this violence.
Railroads been doing this for decades with remote loco to loco and beltpak to loco remote control. MN DOT did it with highway maintenance trucks. No need for all their hardware, most new cars already have throttle by wire and steering assist by wire, only need brute force servo for the brake and with ADAS that’s getting wired too.
Using linear actuators for the pedals and a stepper motor for the steering would have been a better choice. But would have needed a lot more work than a cheap RC receiver.
Considering how many times I’ve mixed up left/right and rammed my own ankles with RC cars, I’d best refrain from this o e.
As the RC heli guys say for inverted flight: Left is right, right is left, down is up and up is expensive.
It’s already been done, several times, years ago. Mythbusters.
Would be quite awesome to see someone do this with one of those giant tour busses. Take it out to the salt flats and have a blast.
I saw this video last night. This isn’t a terrible idea. I mean, yes it is, but it’s exactly what youtube is perfect for: I have an absurd idea that no one should ever do, let me do it, film it, and then upload it for the mass of other crazies who would love to do this but lack the money/skill set to get it done. It’s perfect
This channel is one of the very few automotive youtube subscriptions I have, because his stuff is fantastically interesting. It’s also incredibly diverse- electric cars, off-roading, 3D printing, motorcycles, car reviews, engineering, turbo powered ovens, it’s basically 3 or 4 excellent channels in one. It’s about the only car related content my wife will also watch with me, because Matt is hilarious.
I had never heard of Superfast Matt before I saw his Tesla-fied old Jag at the first Autopian show at Galpin. Now his channel is one of my favorites on Youtube. Love his content.
Today: “Mercedes here! Turning your car into an RC car is a terrible idea! Here’s the video of why it’s bad.”
Next month: “Mercedes here! Because I love terrible ideas, I bought a ’72 Grand Marquis that I turned into an RC car! Here’s the video of it obliterating a port-a-potty at an Autopian meet up!”
I often wonder if, 20 years from now, all of these current “everyday cars” with AEB and lane assist will be able to be hacked into an RC car in a lot less obtrusive way.
I’m still a little bothered by the idea that cars have any autonomous input into my steering or braking, frankly (not for the intent of the safety features, but for the chance of false alarms, failures, or overdependence). But let’s at least have fun with it!
AEB, electronic steering and all the other electronic features is why all the autonomous vehicle startups use luxury cars as their test cars. Electric everything is becoming more common, but ~15 years back when a lot of those companies started, it was more of a luxury car thing.
If everything is already electronic, all that is required to RC a car is getting some computers to talk.
Yeah, it just needs some dedicated CAN Bus reverse engineering for now; as the OEMs move to CAN FD it’ll get harder as they can encrypt those signals, but FD is not yet pervasive.
I can no longer remember where this exists on the internet, as it was several years ago, but there is a video of someone hacking the lane keep assist of his Civic into remote control of the car via an app he wrote for his Android phone. It’s relying on a CAN transceiver plugged into the vehicle, and if I remember correctly and Arduino Duo, but the video shows him using his phone like a control pad to drive his car from the passenger seat, in an empty parking lot.