Among all silly And interesting vehicle For all my wanderings in Antarctica and the Arctic, I never thought I’d come across a vehicle seemingly less suited to the icy wastes than the Australian Volkswagen Beetle. But the Australians who brought the Bug to the continent really pulled it off with a Morris Mini Minor—on the track, of course.
It’s a rainy Friday in Detroit, and on days like these, I like to scroll through my favorite YouTube channels to see what, if anything, I missed. Of course, I had to review our main character Calum Gileswho seems to be creating content explicitly for me.
Strange vehicles, Antarctic research stories, history; he is worth liking and subscribing.
In any case, the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition needed a small, inexpensive vehicle with more all-terrain capability, as their Beetles were limited to driving only a few miles around base camp. keep.
Enter Teddy O’Hare, who is both an engineer and runs a business getting Canadian heavy trucks into the hands of Australian researchers in Antarctica. O’Hare deserves his own spot because he’s an absolutely incredible guy. His workshop was responsible for building the first jet-powered truck, the first truck to reach speeds of 200 mph. It was from his workshop that the Mini-Trac was born.
O’Hare knew from his import business that most tracked vehicles were front-wheel drive, so that’s what he was looking for. Add in the Expedition’s claims of being cheap and compact and there was really only one car at the time that fit that bill—the Mini or Morris Minor Mini as it was known at the time. After testing and a few modifications—let’s be honest, less than you might think—the Mini-Trac first appeared on tape in 1965.
I’ll leave the rest of the story for Calum to tell, but it’s absolutely gripping from start to finish. It took a lot of testing and in the end the Mini-Trac suffered from the fatal flaw of most tiny British cars of the day; reliability. Still, it’s a fascinating piece of automotive and Antarctica history and well worth a 20-minute break to see.
