Stadium Super Truck review | video

Trophy truck racers give as good as they get in their 500kW off-road beasts. Our man finds out for himself. 

To call a Trophy Truck intimidating is an understatement. It's a thinly disguised racing machine with a 500kW-plus V8, massive tyres, stupendous suspension travel and a top speed of about 200km/h on the dirt.

Intimidation turns into downright fear when race champ Brad Gallard fires up the 6.0-litre and starts burning something akin to rocket fuel.

But I'm in South Australia not only watch these mad off-road buggies and silhouette pick-up trucks race in the Riverland Enduro but also get behind the wheel and drive the biggest and baddest.

The latter task, as I discover, takes some doing.

Gallard's truck barrels around the roughly hewn racetrack, soaring over monster jumps and chopping though motocross-style stutter bumps and berms, to the accompaniment of the V8's bellow and a massive dirt rooster tail out the back. Talk about an assault to the senses.

Imported from the US ready to race, his truck is built around a chrome-moly steel space frame with clip-on fibreglass body panels. The hand-built engine is almost mid-mounted and turns the rear wheels via a three-speed auto transmission that shares traits with a drag race gearbox.

The suspension, with 600mm of travel, is also hand-fabricated and has the most complex coil-over suspension you will ever see supporting a wheel and tyre combination about a metre in diameter.

The tight cockpit is similar to a V8 Supercar, possibly more complicated

The Toyo Open Country tyres are specially made for off-road racing.

Trucks like this cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — the technology and materials are on par with or superior to those on V8 Supercars.

Gallard's racer weighs about 2300kg fully kitted including a trolley jack strapped to the back, fuelled ready to race. Its naturally aspirated V8 has complex fuel injection, a huge air cleaner and drain pipe-sized exhaust.

The tight cockpit is similar to a V8 Supercar, possibly more complicated and you have to manually select gears up and down 1-2-3.

Access is via the windows, there's no screen front or back and racing is a two-up affair — a "navigator" is required.

So to the drive.

Having clambered through the driver's window, clipped into the racing harness and fitted the neck brace, I get claustrophobic — and have to extricate myself and walk around a bit.

Back behind the wheel, I have the fan hose connected to the back of my helmet, fixing the freakiness as well as pressurising the helmet to keep out dust.

I flick the ignition, slide my foot under the accelerator toe hook, ease on to the start line and hit the throttle.

Bang. The beast blasts off, snarling and snaking up the sandy home straight and off into the boonies on a 17km lap.

Once I get the feel of the imprecise steering response and brakes, the drive begins to flow — I just keep hard on the throttle and steer, mostly sideways.

The Trophy Truck doesn't take kindly to pussy-footing around so I show it no mechanical mercy, belting across sharp edged stony outcrops and hooking in hard on to metre-high whoops ,allowing the suspension and tyres to soak it all up.

Unlike any other sort of racing

It's not smooth, clinical progression by any stretch. Jolted around, even when belted tight and braced, I take to the jumps.

Easy really, blast up to them, taper off a tad on the run-in then boot it up the ramp — everything goes quiet — then land and blast away again, flicking from side to side, drifting in the sand and dirt, ripping up the straights.

What an awesome experience, unlike any other sort of racing. Best done on an empty stomach, though.