By Alex Kierstein
Forget about crawling around boring railroad tracks … need a vehicle that eats IEDs for breakfast and plays in minefields for fun? Look no further than the Trojan, a Mad Max-esque tractor built from a bucket of main battle tank parts and a healthy dose of aggression.
The most obvious feature of the Trojan is the massive mine-clearing plow up front. Designed to simply run over mines or push them out of the way, it’d make quick work clearing off the track at a typical LeMons race. The Trojan also packs an excavator arm for a little light digging, or to deploy obstacle-crossing fascines. Best of all, it can launch a rocket-propelled 750 foot rope of explosives from a trailer to clear a 25 foot wide path in a risky area – the perfect length for HumVee drag-racing! The Trojan is built off of a Challenger II chassis, currently the main British battletank, and so it shares the Challenger’s 26.1 liter Perkins 12 cylinder diesel engine making a lazy 1,200 HP and an unspecified but surely monumental amount of torque. Hey, with 19.2 horsepower per ton, it’ll go 37 mph tops. Try putting a Briggs and Stratton into a Geo Metro and see if you can top 37 mph … IN A MINEFIELD.
And I kid – the rail inspection vehicles are very cool. They just provided a good excuse to run a photo of a Trojan. Front-end plows FTW!
Wikipedia, Royal Engineers
Latest
Cars, Trucks, Bikes, Project Cars, DIY, Travel, Adventure, Podcast, Videos
Kamil Kaluski
Ah, my new commuter car. 750' of explosive rope will clear the traffic jams nicely.
"Try putting a Briggs and Stratton into a Geo Metro and see if you can top 37 mph … IN A MINEFIELD." Well played, sir. Well played.
I say we put a plow on the Corsica and see if it'll do 37 mph … period. I'd pay money to see that.
Sure beats poking around in the dirt (very carefully) with a bayonet like I learned in Infantry School, way back in the dark days of the Cold War. This impressive monstrosity is a lot more sophisticated than the earliest versions of these that had a big flail that thrashed the ground in front of the vehicle with chains.
I'm with you. After my first trip through a house rigged with traps (damn those combat engineers are clever) and picking my way through a practice minefield, I figured some machine could do it better. Some of the 'bots being used against IED's are pretty cool but nowhere near as massive as the Trojan.
If you're a hot dude looking for a good time, with an explosive climax, just remember to play safe…
Always bring your TROJAN…!
Gold, pure gold. Bravo.
You are very kind. Thanks…!
Hey! It's Matilda from BattleBots!
Doesn't look quite as luxurious as my suggestions, but possibly more utilitarian in the Post-Zombocalyptic Wasteland that we'll be faced with in 2013.
Holy crap, it's Orks! Run for your lives!