Usually, when planning an expedition to Antarctica, you would possibly search for a beefy car for wandering the nice wasteland of snow and ice. One thing just like the building-size Antarctic Snow Cruiser, or the robust Soviet-made Kharkovchanka. You’d most likely over look, say, a Nineteen Sixties Volkswagen Beetle.
Rookie mistake! You’re going to finish up like Australian explorer Douglas Mawson overlooking the hard-working Folks’s Automotive little automobile like that. By a beautiful mixture of timing, science and advertising and marketing, a number of Volkswagens made their method to Antartica through Australian researchers within the Nineteen Sixties. And, because it seems, the common-or-garden little Beetle was rattling helpful for getting round!
Enable one in all my favourite YouTube creators, Calum, to inform you the complete story on these wonderful autos:
The primary VW to finish up within the Antarctic was inventory, with simply primary winterization thrown in to deal with the unbelievable temperatures within the Antarctic. Volkswagen labored instantly with Antarctic researchers to develop a higher, extra resilient car to be used across the base, which might arrive the very subsequent 12 months. I don’t wish to smash the video, because the story of the Bugs within the Antarctic simply will get higher and higher, however suffice to say, three of the official VWs to go to Antarctic ended up profitable racing collection earlier than assembly mysterious ends. A fourth automobile is at present sitting some 700 ft under the ice.
Whereas Volkswagen claimed to be the primary automobile in Antartica, that declare to fame truly belongs to a automobile introduced on a Shackleton expedition within the early twentieth Century, the little VW Bugs have been far more helpful. This complete video is pleasant, as are the opposite movies Calum places out.