Four-year-old child drives new Volvo FMX truck in latest ‘Live Test’, via Forsman & Bodenfors

An unpredictable child and a radio-controlled 18 tonne truck. In Volvo Trucks’ “Look who’s driving” four-year-old Sophie subjects the Volvo FMX to the toughest challenge yet in the Live Test series. The film is a follow-up to previous global successes in the series, such as The Epic Split and The Hamster Stunt.

In this campaign, created by agency Forsman & Bodenfors, Sweden, Volvo Trucks is pushing the boundaries of what is humanly possible – or at least possible with a truck. In the most recent Live Test, “Look who’s driving”, four-year-old Sophie drives an 18 tonne Volvo FMX through a construction area using a remote control. Sophie puts the truck through some serious manoeuvres, including driving through a thick brick wall and climbing a steep, soft slope, before rolling all the way down in a full 360-degree turn.

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Over the year, the truck has been given several new functions, such as the Automatic Traction Control – an all-wheel drive system that kicks in automatically when needed. With the “Look who’s driving”, Volvo Trucks wants to show how much the truck can tolerate.

“To show what the truck can do, we wanted to give it a real challenge. What test driver is more reckless than an unpredictable four-year-old?” asks Ricard Fritz, Vice President of Volvo Trucks.

This is not the first time Volvo Trucks has used an unusual driver to showcase the performance of its trucks. In the 2013 YouTube hit The Hamster Stunt – part 3 in the Volvo Trucks Live Test series – a hamster drove a Volvo FMX. This was in order to showcase the truck’s dynamic steering that’s so easy to handle that even a heavy truck can be controlled with just the fingertips on the steering wheel.