Monster Truck Madness #15 – Crush Cars

One of the great secrets of hardcore r/c monster truckers; where do our crush cars come from?. It’s by far the number one question that I field from YouTube viewers on my Trigger King channel….well, right after “what do these cost?!”. I also get e-mail from readers on here as well, when they see them in pictures.

I’ll answer that in a minute, but first, let’s talk crush cars.

Those of you who watch full size monster trucks may of noticed that junk cars are becoming rarer to see. Monster Jam has all but done away with them and smaller shows use them more sparingly nowadays as well. The reason is that it’s become very costly. Getting good wrecks suitable for monster truck use is becoming harder every year.

In the 80’s and 90’s, junk yards were full of cheap steel bodied wrecks. Most modern cars have lots of plastic and fiberglass and are completely destroyed on the first hit. Not ideal.

When it comes to r/c crush cars, that’s getting tougher as well. Toy stores used to sell big, generic plastic toy cars that you could get for cheap. In the old days that’s what most people used. Nowadays though, trying to acquire good size cars from a toy store will cost you a lot of money as everything is licensed.

So what’s one to do? There is one very small company that sells them. Team Blue Groove, out of Canada. Seen in the banner pic above, they are a 1/10 sized sedans with the roof crushed. TBG has no website, although do they sell them on eBay from time to time. They are all made to order, which is why monster truck clubs typically order in bulk. Personally, I usually order them in batches of 10 or 20 at a time.

If you paint them a solid color (they include over-spray film, FYI) they look just like the crush cars you’d see on full size track. We mount them to a board by way of wood blocks. Screw a wide block where you want the car and then screw the body on top. You can make portable sets this way. They are made of .040 lexan and are pretty dang tough. Yeah, we eventually wear them out and need to replace them, but come on, they are getting slammed into by some 70 vehicles on a race day.

With how popular solid axle monsters are nowadays, I think a company would do well to release their own crush car set. They require no paint masks, decals or formal licensing. Sell ’em in packs of 3 or 5 and watch the money come rolling in!

Anyways, you can reach TBG at teambluegroove@hotmail.com to see about getting some made for you. There, it’s not a secret anymore!