One of the coolest liveries in motorsport has got to be Toyota’s diagonal sunset-coloured TRD striping. Seemingly unchanged since the ’80s, said livery has appeared on everything from NASCARs to Baja trucks, and it’s the latter we have here today.
Built by SpaceHopper, this superb Toyota T100 Baja off-road truck features Control+ remote control drive and steering, working suspension, a fully-caged interior, stunning attention to detail, and – most importantly – a simply brilliant recreation of Toyota’s famous TRD livery.
There’s more of Space’s Toyota T100 Baja model to see at both Flickr and Eurobricks, and you make the jump somewhere in the desert via the links above.
This is a 1950s Berliet T100, a French-built, V12-powered 6×6 truck, with a gross weight of over 100 tons, and it was the largest truck in the world.
Four T100s were built between 1957 and 1959, with three flatbeds (as depicted here) designed to take enormous pieces of equipment off-road to serve oil and gas exploration in Northern Africa, whilst the fourth was outfitted as a dump truck for use in a French uranium mine.
The trucks were powered by a 29.6 litre Cummins engine, supplemented by a smaller Panhard engine used to power the steering and as a generator, and delivered a power figure of between 600 and 700bhp. One T100 was even fitted with an experimental gas turbine for a while, before it reverted back to diesel power.
Nico71’s incredible Technic recreation of the Berliet T100 includes both of these engines, along with a fully working replica of the T100’s 6×6 drivetrain, with three L Motors (one for each axle), all-wheel suspension, and a Medium Motor powering a compressor that can pneumatically lock all three differentials.
A fifth motor drives the steering front axle, with a final M Motor powering a winch mounted at the back of the cab, able to drag equipment up the T100’s ramp for transportation.
All six motors can be operated via bluetooth thanks to a third party SBrick controller, providing Nico’s 1:20 scale 3kg model with an accurate scaled-down representation of the real Berliet T100’s off-road ability.
You can see Nico71’s amazing creation in action via the video below, and you can read full details about both the build and the history of the real 1950s Berliet T100 trucks at Nico’s excellent website, where a complete gallery of images and 550-page building instructions can also be found.
