Impossible Hill Climb

HPI's French 'correspondent' Sylvain Cachard, a writer for one of the French R/C car magazines, wrote us a while back to tell us about a race that is held in France every year. This race is called "La Monte Impossible", which in English means The Impossible Hill Climb, and it's open to any type of R/C land vehicle, whether it's 1/10 scale, 1/8, 1/5, car, truck, buggy, tank, anything!

Unfair, you say? Check out this picture of the track:

The goal of the Impossible Hill Climb was to make it to the top of the hill, or get as close as you can. The track was bumpy, slippery and more than 80 meters long, and not one car was able to make it to the top of the hill, and the car that came the closest was an 1/8 scale buggy that came 2 meters short of clearing the top.

Surprising all the Nitro car drivers was the next car to come closest to the top: an RS4 MT was the first-place electric-powered vehicle in the entire competition! It was driven by Arnaud Ledun, a friend of Sylvain's. It was powered by a ten-turn quad motor, and it came the closest to the high mark that the 1/8 scale buggy set. This certainly opened the eyes of many of the 1/8 and 1/5 scale buggy drivers at the event! You can see from the picture at the right that the MT was not highly modified at all.

The second-place electric kit was piloted by Sylvain himself, an RS4 MT modified with a 'wheelie bar' so it wouldn't flip over:

Here is a close-up picture of Sylvain's wheelie bar system, complete with shock absorber!

We hope this encourages you to take on new challenges with your R/C cars! Maybe sometime soon we can see more pictures of 'crazy' races like this from around the world!