Off-road is about pushing the limits of vehicles and the drivers, but taking it to a new level means something completely down under. Proformance Motorsport has done something to push the sport to a new level regardless of the criticism they have received.

Something that started as a hobby over 15 years ago has turned into a business, and something that is unlike anything out there. We had the chance to talk Scott Bryce, owner of Proformance Motorsport, and see what it has taken to get the sport to the next level.

Scott started racing 2WD IFS (independent front suspension) and IRS (independent rear suspension) buggy’s in the 90s. He won two Western Australia Championships in a 850 pound, one-liter motorcycle powered buggy. He was out running all the vehicles in his class.

The first parts Scott made for the truck were done on a manual lathe and not a fancy CNC machines. There was plenty of trial and error, but perfection is what drove Scott to continue. “What we were doing was something new and different. We had to figure out everything on our own. We would call bearing manufactures to ask about the right amount of bearing preload, and they would not be able to help us because no one had ever done something like this,” Scott said.

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Before and after, the differentials are all CNC machined now. The first set Scott did was on a manual lathe.

Scott continued, “For example we went through all kinds of power steering pumps and lots of power steering ram combinations. It took us a while to find a pump and ram combination that would allow us to turn at the rate we needed. After 1,100 hours of testing we finally found a pump and manufactured our own rack and ram steering system that would work. Our power steering cooler is the largest on the truck and our reservoir holds four gallons of synthetic power steering fluid. We have to use massive 1.5-inch wide belts because everything else would get shredded.”

Building the car was the easy part, it was finding a place to race that came to be the hard part. Around 18 months into the chassis build the rules were quickly changed to exclude the 4WD Truck from racing with the Class 1 buggies because everyone was catching wind of what was brewing. There was no easy road with the build.

Doing something new and exciting to the sport should be supported and praised, but for Scott it was the complete opposite. “I have a huge sense of pride for doing something new, but I was upset that the sport did not embrace the change,” Scott told us. It was more then just talk, competitors rallied each other and the race organizations to ban the car or push it out of the sport.

One of the first races the truck competed in race organizers knew the truck had problems turning, before they figured out their current setup, and they made the turns on the course so tight that the truck had to do three-point turns just to get around the tight corners. The following race he was penalized with a massive 30 minute penalty for passing a slower car that held them up for 10 kms and refused to allow them to pass. It seemed that at ever race everyone made it difficult to allow the truck to compete.

“The truck was, and still is a weapon! When it first his the track, the competitors were nervous because it did not matter how much money someone wanted to spend, they can’t get a truck like this. We had made something so very different you simply cannot buy one like it,” Scott told us. “In it’s first few events, it was keeping pace with the big brand US made trucks and buggies.”

Another stage race the truck competed in had a six mile sandy, soft boggy section that the truck excelled in. During the break between stages, race officials got together and deemed that section unsafe, part because of complaints about the 4WD truck, and removed the section from the course entirely. Race officalsadded 10 miles of pavement to level the playing field out.

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The differential housing and the massive internal gears.

The truck has had no mechanical issues related to our hand made components in the races. No differential or transmission breaks just issues with oil foaming, flooding the cabin with excess oil, breaking numerous power steering belts since they were asking to much of the pump and steering system at times, and a handful of little issues that they could not account for in testing as no one has a vehicle like this to recommend resolutions. For the past few years, they have used racing as a live test bench for their Differentials, to get everything just perfect. From bearing preloads, to pump flow rates, cooler capacities, oil volumes, and temperature stability testing can only be done at the track.

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The truck is one-of-a-kind, and performs just as good as it looks.

Scott told us about a quote from Curt LeDuc that to this day sticks in the back of his head. The quote is from the movie Never Lift, and Curt goes on and says, “Find something you love to do and do it for 20 years. At the end of the 20 years you will be one of two things. Happy and rich, or happy and poor, but either way you will be happy.”

This was never meant to turn into a business, but just a hobby. It wasn’t until numerous calls from people all over the world asking him to make another set of his differentials that the business was created.

To this day Scott loves what he does. The passion for off-road and pushing the sport to a new level is exactly what keeps him moving. He will be at the Off Road Expo later this year, and we cannot wait to meet him and his products. Check out their Facebook album that has all the pictures from them hand making the first parts.