In December 2013 a pickup truck with a body made of 11,000 pounds of ice drove through the small town of Hensall, Ontario. The see-through Chevrolet Silverado was built for a Canadian Tire commercial to show that its MotoMaster Eliminator battery could start an engine in the deepest cold, and it was driven for a Guinness world record attempt.
How the ice truck was built
The project started with the frame of a 2005 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 HD. In Texas, Bronson Line Automotive stripped off the cab and body and lowered the engine bay. The chassis then went to Ontario, where Pick Me Productions added a steel support frame and the ice-carving company Iceculture, based in Hensall, sculpted the bodywork, cab, seats and bed from clear ice.
Everything that makes a truck move stayed conventional: the engine, wheels and a few key components were real metal and rubber. The rest was ice. The finished truck weighed about 15,000 pounds (6,800 kg), and 11,000 pounds of that, roughly five tonnes, was frozen water. The working model had to be reassembled in under 24 hours before the drive.
The drive and the world record attempt
The truck was driven slowly out of Iceculture’s facility and around Hensall for about 1.6 km (one mile), at around 20 km/h, on 12 December 2013. Canadian Tire described the drive as an attempt to set a new Guinness World Records category. The footage became an ad in the retailer’s “Tested for Life in Canada” campaign, which debuted on 1 January 2014 during the NHL Winter Classic.
Canadian Tire released three videos of the project: the crew assembling the ice panels around the chassis, the truck rolling along the road, and the body slowly melting once the temperature rose.
Why ice works as a sculpture material
Seen as a sculpture, the truck is all edges, thickness and changing transparency. Light passes through the bodywork, so the familiar pickup outline seems to float around the working parts inside. The interior shot is the most striking: an ordinary steering wheel set into a cab of carved ice. The melting footage completed the idea. A normal vehicle launch ends with the finished product; this one ends with the body turning back into water, a reminder that the whole stunt depended on cold Canadian weather.
For more ice craft, see ice used to shape hotel interiors and icebergs recreated in pastel.
Sources
New Atlas: Canadian ice truck; Marketing Magazine: A better kind of icy drive. Story first reported by Gizmodo. Photographs: Canadian Tire ice-truck campaign.
No comments