Ice pick-up truck is as cool as it gets

A pick-up truck made from ice? Only in Canada.

We’ve seen some strange automotive creations over our time, but few come close to the pick-up truck made from solid blocks of ice. Spotted in a Canadian commercial, this sub-zero workhorse is the creation of ice sculpture specialists Iceculture and was built for retail chain Canadian Tire. A whopping 11,000lbs worth of ice blocks make up the expertly sculpted exterior.

It was built to show Canadian Tire’s MotoMaster Eliminator Ultra battery will do its job at temperatures up to 40 degrees Celsius below freezing, which is useful in a country where a recent spate of bad weather has seen the mercury drop as low as minus 52 degrees.

For the sake of safety, the internal components are borrowed from a real truck, which means you won’t get your hands stuck to the steering wheel. Even so, all that frozen water is going to make the cockpit a pretty chilly place to be ─ especially when heating is out of the question.

The suspension was welded solid to cope with the extra weight ─ and that’s as far as the modifications go. Suffice to say, this isn’t going to be a cheap to run. We also question its usefulness in the summer, but these are minor technicalities for what is by far the coolest pick-up in the world.

Reports say the team behind the ice pickup hopes to enter the Guinness Book of World Records.

Ice may not seem like the ideal material for building vehicles but it has been considered by various car makers. During World War II the British contemplated building an aircraft carrier out of pykrete – a mix of wood pulp and ice – as it was found to resist projectiles such as bullets and could be manufactured more efficiently than steel. The project was later canned.

YouTube below shows a glimpse of the process of how the pick-up truck was built. Scroll on down to check it out.