When I stumbled across the video of Rick White’s scale ’66 Bronco crawling over rocks (and scaring small animals), I was transfixed. The man known on the Interwebs as “Headquake” builds some of the most realistic R/C cars and trucks you’ll ever see. By hand. From wood. Check out his creations and hear what he has to say about the craft.

IMG: What is it that attracts you to building these hyper-realistic R/C models?

HQ: I’ve always been into making things with my hands. Paintings, music, sculptures, etc. I’ve also always been attracted to off-road cars and bikes. Rubber treads in the dirt. I used to play a lot with toy trucks as a little kid, I loved to make roads and tracks in the back yard to play with them on. Never had any R/C cars in my youth but as I moved out into the country again at 34 years old, I found myself with a few acres of land. I made a few trails to walk on and thought to myself how it would be fun to have a remote control scale-looking truck to drive around. I started looking around at R/C stuff and found there wasn’t much available like what I imagined. But I found a good forum and learned about R/C crawlers, and found a few guys that were trying to make more scale-appearing trail trucks, too. I learned what I needed and started building my own. 41 years old now, and the obsession is still growing.

IMG: One of the coolest aspects of your machines is that they are scratch-built. Talk to us a little about your process. What kind of time do you put into your creations?

HQ: Well, there are other guys out there building some pretty nice scale rigs as well. Most of them use styrene plastic to do this, and I tried styrene at first but found that the bodies ended up kinda brittle and light for my liking. Everyone was used to having lexan bodies on their RC cars, so people built scale like trucks that, too, because it was light and strong. It made the center of gravity lower and helped the truck perform better. Its movements didn’t look real on the trail to me, so I decided the trucks needed less articulation in the suspension and more weight all over. So I made up a simple chassis and tried making my first body out of wood. I loved the way it drove and pushed into the dirt so I started making all my trucks this way.

The first couple of bodies took about a month each as I was figuring out the best way to do everything as I went. I’m learning more tricks and techniques now, so it’s getting faster. If I have the time to work on them 8 hours a day, I can finish one now in 5 or 6 days.

IMG: Where does your inspiration come from?

HQ: I love the look of so many cars and trucks from the 50’s and 60’s. I’m not biased to any one manufacturer, so there’s lots more I’d like to build. It just gives me so much pleasure making these, and is very meditative to drive them in the woods afterward and make little movies to document them. After a bunch of crazy years in a person’s life, its nice to have the chance to relax and play like a kid sometimes.

IMG: Do you have a favorite build?

I still really love the look of my ’67 Fargo build. It’s a great looking truck in real life and I’ve always wanted one. The Dodge version would be fine, too. I just made it a Fargo because it was more rare and Canadian, like myself.

IMG: Your videos are fun to watch! It’s easy to get “transported” into that small-scale world you’ve created.

HQ: That’s almost the most fun part of building these trucks. They make good little actors. I like my videos to come across like a different world. No macho junk and no advertising. Just an innocent and calm little drive. I find the most interesting ones are the ones with no music or added sounds. Just the natural sound of nature and the squeaks and gearing of the truck. Besides fans of scale trucks liking my vids, I’ve heard that little kids really like them, too. I think that’s cool ’cause I just wanna spread the idea of creativity to people.

IMG: What’s parked in your full-size garage/driveway?

HQ: A ’98 Toyota 4runner, a ’69 Pontiac GTO, and a ’63 Mercury Monterey that needs some work.

Be sure to check out all of Headquake’s videos on his YouTube Channel, and…



Have fun in your garage!