Icelandic off-road company sets record South Pole crossing

Filed under: Motorsports, Truck, Toyota, Off-Road



Guinness recognized a new world record for the fastest overland journey to the South Pole this week. The expedition occurred in December 2010, when two modified Toyota Hilux trucks travelled 1,434 miles across the Antarctic High Plateau in 108 hours.

That the average speed for the trip was just over 13 miles per hour gives an indication of the extreme conditions the drivers faced, at altitudes up to two miles above sea level. The expedition was organized by the Kazakhstan National Geographic Society and The Antarctica Company, and included four members: Konstantin Orlov and Stanislav Makarenko from KNGS, Andrey Myller from TAC, and Hlynur Sigurdsson from Arctic Trucks - the off-road tuning company that built the vehicles.

Arctic Trucks used 170-horsepower, 3-liter turbodiesel Hiluxes for the expedition build, modified to carry a whopping 285 gallons of fuel, 74 in tanks and the rest in the bed. The Arctic Trucks Expedition AT44 gets its name from 44x18.5 tires fitted to 15-inch rims and run at tire pressures as low as 2 psi. The four-by-four ice-crawlers have five-speed automatic transmissions with part-time transfer cases and a 2.566:1 low gear. Besides carrying up to 1.3 tons, the trucks are equipped to tow an additional 1.5 tons on a trailer. The AT44 weighs in at 4,960 pounds and manages about 5 mpg in the Antarctic snow.

Read the full press release after the jump.

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Icelandic off-road company sets record South Pole crossing originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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