'A piece of television history': driving TGTV's record-breaking Arctic Toyota Hilux

When all’s said and done it’s just a Hilux. Admittedly it wears balloon rubber and a gun case, but that’s all surface dressing. You can strip it away and it won’t make a blind bit of difference. It wasn’t accessories that gave this Toyota strength. The Hilux was already tough.

It just needed a chance to prove it. On Top Gear TV in the 2000s its moment came. Several times, actually. There was the time it was blown up – and the 23 storey building it was standing on. Another had an outboard engine attached and was sent out to sail the English Channel. Another attempted to drive into a volcano. They all survived.

But this one was a genuine record breaker. The first car ever to visit the magnetic North Pole. It wears this achievement lightly. It doesn’t glow with inner radiance or have the grizzled faraway look of an explorer. It’s just a Hilux, out doing Hilux things.

Photography: Jonny Fleetwood

Albeit one modified by Icelandic expedition specialists Arctic Trucks for the job of driving 450 miles across the Polar ice cap from Resolute in Northern Canada. The suspension was reinforced, the front double wishbones moved forward slightly to make room for the giant 38in tyres (£2,500 a pop), there were heavy duty diffs and sump guard, plus an auxiliary fuel tank and freeze resistant fuel.

But the basics, the 3.0-litre diesel mated to a four speed automatic, the chassis, heating system, seats and everything else, was entirely standard. As Jeremy pointed out during the film, everything else packed up: the radios, the microphones, the cameras, the batteries, the humans – all failed along the way. The Hilux didn’t.

Meeting it today is bittersweet. I watched the film again before I drove it (S9 E7, it’s on iPlayer), saw it rampaging through snowdrifts, barrelling over ice fields and generally proving unstoppable in the face of every challenge the Arctic could throw at it, and I felt a bit sorry for it.

It’s bittersweet for another reason, too. There are heroes you should meet and heroes you shouldn’t. This is one of the latter. The realisation comes almost as soon as you start moving in it. It’s just a Hilux. Of course it is, that’s its superpower. But somehow, because of its achievement, you expect more, you expect an aura to surround it. Instead it relies on the remaining cabin extras to remind you of what it once did. Dark tinted windows to reduce Arctic glare, extra lights on the doors to brighten up Jeremy and James for the cameras, extra mounts, a marina nav system, gaffer tape everywhere.

Because of its achievement, you expect more, you expect an aura to surround it

On the move it’s a slug. The diesel is a rattly, uncouth old thing, the gearbox slurs changes and the whole drivetrain feels dreary and tired. It doesn’t like accelerating much. It doesn’t like braking much. And it certainly doesn’t like turning much. But none of that mattered. All it had to do was keep going. And that’s the vibe it still gives off – you just point it somewhere and it will keep on going until the job is done.

Most ironically of all, it doesn’t appear to have much sense of direction. The tyres are pumped up properly, not down at 4psi for crawling over thin ice, yet it wanders around the place feeling terrifically vague. The ride is jiggly, and as speed picks up those tyres have a huge gyroscopic effect, pulling the whole car in their chosen direction, while inside you saw at the wheel wondering why the car isn’t going where you’re telling it to.

What it achieved is heroic. Even today, almost 20 years on, only seven cars have been to the magnetic North Pole (and two of those, support Hiluxes, were part of the TG expedition). I love the fact it’s still here, still in unrestored condition. It’s a snapshot, a piece of television history, proof that Top Gear could create legends. But I tend to anthropomorphise, and then I feel sorry for this mighty explorer who never got a second expedition.