It’s not every day that you drive a Ford Super Duty through Manhattan, and even more rare when it has six-wheel drive and 44-inch tires. Dodging EVs and swinging Titanic-wide turns through streets originally designed for horse-drawn carriages is a test of nerves and insurance policies. This Super Duty was not intended for city life. Built by Arctic Trucks North America, a branch of its Icelandic parent company, it was destined for snow, miles-deep snow, and that’s where its pilot, Andrew Comrie-Picard, is planning to take it. Just as soon as we find somewhere to park.
Finding some real estate on East 70th Street, Comrie-Picard and I climb out in front of The Explorers Club. The Explorers Club was founded in 1904 and has served as a starting and finishing point for adventures to the ends of the earth, the tops of mountain peaks, and to the bottom of the ocean, many done while flying the club’s compass-bedecked flag.
Comrie-Picard’s career includes stunt coordinator for Top Gear, rally and Baja 1000 champion, and host of various television shows, but his bucket-list obsession has been to drive a wheeled vehicle to the North Pole, and then to the South Pole. If things go well, it will be crossed off the list this year, and we were in New York City to kick off the journey.
Comrie-Picard took the podium and made introductions. Vasily Elagin (North Pole regular and Marine Life Arctic Expeditions organizer), Vasily Shakhnovsky (seven summits and two poles), Alex Abramov (7 Peaks Club president), and Emil Grimmson (Arctic Trucks chairman), who wrote the book on vehicle-based Antarctic travel. Together, along with a team of leading environmental scientists and support crew, this multinational assemblage comprises the Transglobal Car Expedition (TGCE).
The plan is simple. Drive through Northern Canada and touch the magnetic and geographical North Pole, then south across the Greenland Ice Cap before shipping out to Europe. After an 8000-mile game of leapfrog through the Middle East and down the spine of Africa, another freighter will ferry them across the Southern Ocean to the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on the planet. Antarctica. When they reach the Amundson-Scott South Pole Station, where many would call it a wrap, the TGCE team will just be hitting their stride.
The Fleet
Considering the array of environments between the poles, they needed vehicles that could handle extended sections of pavement but also manage thousands of miles on soft snow. The North Pole will be especially challenging, as beneath the ice cap, which is constantly being pushed and folded by the Transpolar Drift Stream, lurks a 10,000-foot abyss of bone-chilling seawater. Other key considerations were reliability, capability, and global availability of parts and service. The decision was a fleet of Fords.
The Super Duty we were driving, Arctic Trucks’ AT44 XDS, will be joined by an AT44 F-150 hybrid and several AT35 Expeditions. While the former two have been highly modified to fit 44-inch flotation tires and carry a ton of gear, the Expeditions are generally stock platforms.
In preparation, the team made several test runs to assess vehicles and equipment, each of which could qualify as a stand-alone expedition. These included desert treks in the American Southwest and 1400 miles over tundra and sea ice from Yellowknife to Resolute Bay, Canada—claimed to be the first “wheeled vehicle” crossing of the continental shelf to the high Arctic.
Risk Factor
While navigating Africa and Central America is far from a picnic, risks in the polar regions are magnified. Polar bears in the Arctic, extended exposure to sub-zero temperatures, and frostbite are omnipresent threats. When traveling across open ocean on a thin sheet of ice, a miscalculation could result in a cold and watery grave. During a March 2022 trial run near Tasmania Island, Nunavut, one of the team’s AT44 F-150s plunged through the ice and disappeared into the abyss. Fortunately, the crew escaped and the water was only 30 feet deep. The team was able to retrieve the vehicle five months later, and though it was a total loss, the priority was leaving these ancient Inuit hunting grounds ecologically unscathed. “It was never about getting the truck back,” said Comrie-Picard. “It was about doing the right thing and respecting the land.”
Carbon Footprint
In our EV-obsessed world, we can’t help but question the environmental cost of burning tons of fuel on a joy ride around the world. Is this the arena of adrenaline junkies and fat wallets? Possibly, but considering most of the players have spent their lives in polar zones, their interest lay in our planet’s changing climate and its effect on their home turf. This led them to University of Bremen geophysics professor Christian Haas. Haas has spent his life studying the health of polar ice, and thus far his conclusions have been based on satellite, laser, and radar altimetry . . . or manually drilled ice core samples. But TGCE will be shifting the research needle north.
Haas said, “These vehicles can tow our ground-penetrating sonar and give us extremely accurate, real-time data.” The solution came in the form of the team’s fourth platform, Yemelya amphibians. Specifically designed for regions where you might need a paddle, the Yemelya will be towing electromagnetic induction (EMI) sounding equipment across 1200 miles of the Arctic ice cap while collecting that previously elusive data known as unobtainium.
TGCE has also partnered with the Cosmic Pi project and will be deploying muon detectors for the collection of cosmic radiation data (the first to be obtained at the North Pole). Other initiatives include sampling light pollution for NOIRLab’s Globe at Night, and astronaut Paolo Nespoli will be studying the physiological and biological changes to humans subjected to extreme conditions. In other words, the team will double as lab rats.
The project is being underwritten by Goodgear, whose charter is establishing a link between scientific discovery, technology, and global adventure. Due to the scientific elements, it has also been sanctioned by the Explorers Club as a Flag Expedition, and one of its coveted red, white, and blue banners will accompany the team from pole to pole.
The fleet of Fords rolled out of New York City en route to Yellowknife and Cambridge Bay, where they will climb into four Yemelyas to cross the polar ice cap. If all goes well, they’ll reach Antarctica and the South Pole in December, then head across the Straits of Magellan to Punta Arenas, Chile, where they will thread a path through the Americas back to New York to close the loop.
We’ll be following their progress on an online tracker (you can too), but if you are bat-crap crazy, a few slots have been reserved for qualified (and funded) participants to join select legs of the expedition.
Expedition Fleet
AT44 XDS F-350 6×6
Platform: Ford F-350 Super Duty
Engine/trans: high-output 6.7-liter Power Stroke turbocharged-diesel/10-speed automatic (XCT 2:1 crawler gear)
Output: 500 hp, 1,200 lb-ft
Suspension: conventional front, 8-link airbag lift rear
Tires & wheels: 44-in Nokian/AT, steel wheels
Fuel/capacity: jet A1/141 gal (535 liters)
Vehicle weight rating: 15,400 lb
Other: central tire inflation system
Build cost: $425,000
AT44 F-150 Hybrid
Platform: Ford F-150
Powertrain/transmission: 3.5-liter V-6 hybrid, 35kW electric motor/10-speed automatic
Output: 430 hp, 570 lb-ft
Suspension: Arctic Trucks Custom
Tires & wheels: 44-inch Nokian/AT, steel wheels
Fuel/capacity: gasoline/51 gal (214 liters)
Other: central tire inflation system
Build cost: $250,000
AT35 Expedition
Platform: Ford Expedition
Powertrain/transmission: 3.5-liter V-6 hybrid, 35kW electric motor/10-speed automatic
Output: 430 hp, 570 lb-ft
Suspension: stock
Tires & wheels: 35-in BFGoodrich KO2 AT, stock wheels
Fuel/capacity: gasoline/23.2 gal (89 liters)
Other: on-board air; front grill; Starlink satellite internet
Build cost: $97,000
Yemelya 6×6 Amphibian
Number produced: 4
Engine/transmission: Toyota 2.0-liter inline-4 diesel/5-speed manual
Output: 101 hp, 97 lb-ft (75kW, 1324nm)
Suspension: independent front and rear
Tires & wheels: 51-in flotation, 21-in wheels
Fuel/capacity: diesel/13.2 gal (50 liters) onboard, 158 gal (600 liters) in tow
Towing: three sledges @ 1,763 lb (800 kg)
Weight/payload: 3,152 lb (1,430 kg)/1,322 lb (600 kg)
Max speed: 31 mph (50 kph) land; 86 mph (3 kph) water
Length x width x height: 204.7 x 96.5 x 106.3 in (5200 x 2450 x 2700 mm)
Minimum operating temperature: -55ºC
Other: alloy body/frame; PTO winch; sleeps 5
Build cost: mortgage your house