Automotive Oddities: From Ford’s Real Tonka Truck to Actual Vehicles Built with Ice and Lego

When you become a mechanic, you expect to be working with engines, mufflers, brakes, tires, car doors and other standard parts. More and more, you’ll be dealing with electric components and other new-ish inventions, but you never expect to be building with ice and Lego or be using a toy as your model. There are, however, some auto technicians who have done just that.

Here is a look at some of the more interesting automotive creations to come out recently:

A Very Icy Ride

When you learn how to become a mechanic in Canada, you probably hear quite a bit about preventing ice from negatively affecting a car or truck during winter. Using ice as part of the vehicle itself is another story entirely and it’s a story Canadian Tire decided to tell.

In order to promote that its new MotoMaster Eliminator Ultra battery works in very cold temperatures, they had a truck built with 14,000 pounds of real ice blocks and froze the battery to -40 degrees before attaching it to the vehicle.

Of course it wasn’t made entirely of ice. They took a 2005 GMC Silverado, removed the body and gave it a steel frame, then fitted the ice to that. It drove at 19 kilometers per hour and while that might not be the speed you’d expect from a Silverado, most Silverados aren’t half made of ice.

Have a look at the ice truck in action in this Canadian Tire commercial:

Lego My Ride

People have been building cars out of Lego for decades, but they generally fit in the palm of your hands. Also, they generally aren’t road-worthy. That was until Australia’s Steve Sammartino and Raul Oaida launched their Super Awesome Micro Project.

This was a crowdfunded effort to build a functioning full-sized car out of Lego. It took $22,000, 20 months and 500,000 Lego bricks, but it worked. Its Lego engine uses compressed air to make the vehicle move between 10 and 20 kilometers per hour, according to its creators. The wheels, tires and gauges are the only parts not made of Lego for obvious reasons.

Have a look at this Lego-mobile in action:

Life-Sized Tonka Truck

If you ever wondered what it would be like if that Tonka truck you played with as a kid had a 6.7-litre Power Stroke V8 diesel engine and offered 270 horsepower and 675 lb-ft of torque, well, Ford has the answer. They built the F-750 Tonka Dump Truck in partnership with Hasbro-licensed Tonka manufacturer Funrise Toy Corp.

Unfortunately, you can’t take it home, this is just a concept car, not a production vehicle. You can check it out in this video, though: