Ford F-150 expedition vehicle recovered after sinking in the Arctic Ocean

A specially modified ford f-150 The van from an expedition between the North and South Poles has been recovered from the Arctic Ocean, after it slid through melting ice earlier this year.

In March, the Ford F-150 built by polar vehicle specialists Arctic Trucks plunged through rapidly melting ice into the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Canada’s Tasman Islands.

The vehicle, which has a raised suspension and huge tires to handle rough terrain, spent five months underwater before a recovery mission could be launched to remove the environmental hazard and return the vehicle to the surface.

The Ford F-150 ‘AT44’, which refers to its 44-inch tires and Arctic Trucks modifications, was in a test run by the Transglobal Car Expedition, which plans to make its way between the North and South Poles in 2024.

A pair of underwater divers floated the truck earlier this week using large airbags, bringing it to the surface where it was later recovered by a helicopter (see below) and airlifted to a nearby city.

After completing the world’s first wheeled land crossing from the Canadian continental shelf to the High Arctic, the truck fell through cracks in the ice and the occupants escaped unharmed.

“I realized very quickly what was happening, I tried to put the gas on it to accelerate but nothing happened,” the car’s driver, Torfi Birkir Johannsson, said in a press release.

“I quickly suspected that there was deep water below and that we would lose the car, my thought was ‘what do we need most before we lose it’.

“I considered whether I should go back to the car to get some clothes, my phone, my computers, etc., but decided to climb on the roof rack and take out the extra heavy clothes that the four of us had stored in this car.

“I managed to free two straps and all four bags, I thought we’d need this, especially if the other car went down too, and I jumped to get these bags to safer ice.”

The Transglobal Car Expedition will start in January 2024 and will cover 40,000 km of travel across the Americas, Europe and Africa to complete the journey from the North Pole to the South Pole.