M12 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle

The M12 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle (aka Warthog) is a vehicle that comes from the well known Halo series, but were talking about the real one. This real-life Warthog was was put together in only six weeks in preparation for a planned Halo live action movie. Well, at least until the studios put the project on ice. The work was done in Wellington, New Zealand, at Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop and headed by project engineer Peter Osborne. The team at Weta based the Warthog on mechanicals from a diesel Nissan Patrol, but those were limited to basic chassis parts, the diesel engine, transmission and transfer case. Everything else is very, very custom. For the sake of simplicity, this early Warthog gets a set of heavily-reinforced solid axles instead of the fully independent suspension in the video game, but pretty much everything else is faithful. (Read more...)