THE Cub Report, Version- All Hail To Nero

After holding our lips for so long, now we can finally talk about ARRMA’s new monster truck, the Nero. Wheewwwww… there are some trucks that are pretty ho-hum, but holding back the Nero has been quite the experience. Why? Well just look at it, the Nero isn’t just another run-of-the-mill truck, ARRMA went all out on this one.

So I am going to assume you’ve already read our Nero post, but for those of you who have not, here is the scoop. The biggest new feature on the 1/8 Nero is its Smart Diffs. Ok, so maybe they aren’t as smart as Deep Blue, but they allow you to lock them via the transmitter. Ever get tired of your front tires pizza cutting when you hammer the throttle? You can fix that by locking the center diff. See some rocks and want to do some climbing? Lock all three. Having the ability to lock the diffs from the transmitter is pretty slick.

Then you have the Nero’s TVP (twin vertical plate) chassis. The design is quite compact and designed to take some enormous g-forces when going full-tilt-boogie at your local bash spot. The Nero was designed for those horrific sky high landings that leave other trucks in a pile of rubble. Now, I’m not saying that the Nero is going to be easy to work on, I haven’t tried to wrench on one yet, but for gnar-core bashing, you want beefy, and that’s how the Nero was designed.

Then we get to the shocks. Ok, so laydown shocks don’t typically work that well in rc, or least they haven’t to this point. I mean, look at the Revo. It was wayyy too soft near fully extended, and its rising rate just didn’t rise enough near full compression. The laydown design can work well, it has in full sized cars and motocross bikes for years, I for one hope that ARRMA took the time to get that style of suspension dialed in.

And then, we gotta talk about price point. Interestingly enough, ARRMA is releasing two versions- one with smart diffs ($799) and one without ($699). A $799 price point puts the Nero right straight in X-Maxx territory, but at a smaller form factor. But hey, the Nero is still a very large MT and it should be wayyyyyyy faster out of the box. Oh and, the X-Maxx loves to break, if the Nero can take a beating (like most ARRMA’s are legendary for), it would definitely get my hard earned cash before the Traxxas. Ya, I hear some of you guys out there rumbling that $799 is too much for a bash-mobile, but it isn’t if that truck brings a lot to the plate like the Nero is.

To boil it down, yes, the BSRC Bash Crew is pretty stoked about the new Nero. We are stoked that ARRMA is going big with an all new design to breathe some more life into the bashing world, and we are stoked that they decided to take some chances on its design. Some people will look at it and fear its radical design and new technology, when maybe they should be stoked that ARRMA decided to go-for-it with an all new design.

And yes, we have some pretty epic things planned for our Nero review, but you’ll have to wait a bit to read that one. 🙂

So there ya have it bash freaks, yet another epic truck to lust over. Until next week, support your local tracks and bash spots when ya can.

YOUR Cub Reporter