You all know Top Gear's expedition to the North Pole in a Toyota. Some of you may also know that the Hilux managed to conquer the South Pole too. The SUV's latest achievement is a 5,900-mile journey around Antarctica, which was done while running on jet fuel. As always, the three Toyota Hilux units, which ran the “marathon”, have been developed by the Icelandics from Arctic Trucks. The cars are powered by the standard 3.0-litre D-4D engine, together with the factory transmission. To cope with the extreme cold of the Antarctica, they ran on Jet A-1 fuel, which has a much lower freezing temperature.
The three Hilux SUVs, out of which two are 6×6 models, competed in the Antarctic race for four months from November 2011 to February 2012.
Apart from the 6x6 drive, they also have several other modifications. Arctic Trucks fitted them with a crane, a 280-litre fuel tank (800 liters for the 6x6 versions) and custom tires which 17 times larger the standard ones. The original suspension and drivetrain of the Toyota Hilux have been strengthened and their transmission received crawler gears.
