L4 Turbo

Introducing my second ever 3D creation, successor to LowVolt, and my first ever (partial) collaborative effort. RVGL car creation seems to be a yearly ritual for me, however this particular vehicle was in early development during Christmas of 2019 (just one month following the creation of LowVolt). Naming this truck was a bit tricky, and it actually went without a name until about November 2020 - kudos to the Discord for weighing in on which names they thought were the best! As you may have guessed, L4 Turbo is nomenclature that describes another vehicle in the 'Turbo' series - similar to R6 Turbo. I drew inspiration from several places when coming up with the design for this truck - the front end is partly inspired by the 1980 Honda Civic hatchback, which at the time I noticed was featured in the movie: Home Alone. But the overall idea behind this truck was to attempt to create (one of) the smallest monster trucks in RVGL. I also wanted to shoot for creating an Advanced level car, as I've mentioned before that the Advanced class is my favorite. So naturally, R6 turbo came to mind as a working template - as it is one of the faster RCs in the Advanced class and possibly the smallest car in the game. Initially, I thought about just taking the R6 turbo body and putting it on big wheels, similar to Grave Digger - but then I thought 'if I made R6 Turbo into a pickup truck, I'll have a cool place to store the battery', unique battery placement is something I always aim to do in my designs. The thought of a small RC pick up truck also reminded me of a particular RC Ford pickup truck that I grew up playing with, which also influenced the design. Now you may notice that L4 Turbo is mentioned as being a 'hybrid-electric micro truck', which is represented by the engine type 'other' in game and is coupled with a unique sound sample. The audio sample actually came from a real-life recording that I put together of my 1/12th scale ECX Torment SCT. I've also mentioned in the past that Electric RC types are my favorite in this game, so I attempted to get a more realistic sound by recording a real RC truck. When implementing the audio I found the result to be a bit strange while having the engine type set as electric, but after changing it to petrol mode - it produced a sound that I found interesting. Thus, L4 Turbo became a petrol/lithium hybrid. Moving on to the skin design - which was originally intended to be reminiscent of the RC truck 'Turbo Bandit' from TYCO. However I had decided to reach out to the Discord community for help early on - and to my surprise ElCapitaine willingly created a skin for me (thanks man)! After that, I ended up doing a skin rip from R6 Turbo (since in my mind, the concept ended up as an 'upgraded' model of R6 from the 'Turbo.sys' company that you can see displayed on its' windshield). So, needless to say the 'Turbo Bandit' skin never came into existence. In terms of maneuverability, this thing is VERY user friendly, there's not really any skill curve to speak of. I really wanted to give it the best of both worlds: off-road capability and speed (due to it's small size), so this guy is a threat for sure. The parameters were also tuned to be a rival to R6 Turbo - making these two very close in performance so it should make for some interesting races! What you should expect on the track:
Thanks to the easy handling, 4-wheel drive and light-weight - this truck hardly notices when it's driving through oil (or ice). The downside, open wheels and super light-weight mean two things:
1) avoid colliding with people, L4 Turbo is effectively one of the smallest RCs on the track, and has the same physical faults as a monster truck but without the body weight to defend itself from being bullied.
2) Shockwave can send your tiny butt spiraling through the air - so look out for that one.

Anyway, that's about all I have on this guy - I gotta stop or I'll be writing forever. Hope you enjoy this truck as much as I enjoyed making it, and happy racing!