Russian boffins create iPad-controlled carVimeo

A group of Russian car-tinkerers have bucked the trend for 'dashcam' crash videos by producing a neat viral that shows what some serious engineering skills and a whole lot of patience can achieve.

The project sees an Opel Vectra undergo some serious tweaking to enable the machine to be controlled remotely by an iPad app.

Great inspiration appears to have been taken from the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies where Pierce Brosnan remotely controls a BMW 750iL via his mobile phone.

Unlike the crew behind the Bond films, the Russian experimentalists didn't have a Hollywood budget so were forced to improvise with a new actuator for the brakes, new motors for the steering, and a mechanical movement to shift gears instead of having to get in and out to do it manually.

The iPad application also looks a little, er, homemade as it features a button for the accelerator and brakes, a touch-screen interface for the steering and a button for shifting gears.

It doesn't appear to allow the user to adjust the amount of power, it's simply an on or off scenario, so inevitably it crashes.

Regardless, the contraption works and you can watch it in action below...