Four year-old 'Sophie' puts Volvo truck to the test
Volvo collaborated with its award winning ad agency Forsman and Bodenfors of Sweden for this second in a series of video ads the company calls its "Live Test Series."
The first video aired in 2013 and depicted actor Jean-Claude Van Damme performing an 'Epic Split' - an incredible show of athleticism meant to illustrate the steering precision provided by the company's two trucks - with Van Damme standing between the trucks as they move apart and his legs split.
This second video debuted this past week and features a four-year old English girl named Sophie, who sports pigtails and thick glasses, who is given a remote control pilot to gleefully drive the 540 hp FMX 8x6 all wheel drive Volvo Truck through a massive obstacle course.
Filmed in Serbia and directed by Megaforce, the remote control used by Sophie was specially made for the film. The truck endures even when Sophie gets distracted by a drone flying overhead and inadvertantly flips the truck over a steep embankment. The truck rolls and is righted, and then Sophie remotely moves it forward again, only to then smilingly plow it right through a concrete house.
According to a Volvo spokesperson, the objective of the 'test' is to show how much it can tolerate and how easily it copes in the most demanding environments. The truck is deemed 'the toughest ever built' and the spokesman said that "to show what the truck can do, we wanted to give it a real challenge." The fact that it is equipped with the new Automatic Traction Control (ATC), a feature that automatically engages the front axle when it's needed, means that the truck can clearly withstand the 'Sophie' test.