Mini Trac - The Amazing Tracked Mini Built for Antarctica

A look at the history of the 'Mini Trac', a beautiful and bizarre attempt at crossing a Mark 1 Mini with snow-capable tracks! It was mad, quirky and a pretty big failure.

A massive thank you to both Watto at the BMC Experience Reloaded for sharing with me the articles and photos used in this video and to Ian White for his incredible work in researching and documenting this amazing piece of footage. Without his dedication, the Mini-Trac would have probably faded like so many things into the mists of time.

Link to Art!

Credits & References

Original Research & Writing by Ian White

VWs in Antarctica

Antarctica New Zealand -

New Article about Terry & Recar -

Waltzing Matilda

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction
01:12 - Australia's Search for a Vehicle
02:19 - Bugs in Antarctica
03:07 - Terry O' Hare & Recar
04:13 - Finding a Suitable Vehicle
04:46 - The Perfect Candidate.
05:39 - The Mini Track is Born
06:01 - Design & Alterations
09:29 - Initial Testing
09:54 - Next Stop Antarctica
10:24 - Performance & Operation
11:17 - Issues & Failure
12:00 - Where Are They Now?
14:04 - Outro
14:30 - waffling on for a bit

[ObscuraGrey]

You honestly make little things like this endlessly interesting. Don't ever stop making videos about quirky stuff you like, it really shows in the product.

[CalumRaasay]

Thanks for tuning into another episode of "what will I mispronounce today". Had a blast making and drawing this, lets go find what happened to those mini tracs!

[darkangeljas]

When you first mentioned that it was an Australian creation, my immediate thought was, "Haha! Yeah! That's some Aussie Mad Max vehicle mashup right there!", only for it to come full circle at the end when you said its creator also worked on the movies cars.

Feelin' some true blue Aussie pride after watching this amazing vid.

[theproceedings]

Dude, you could make a career out of these documentaries, they beat the hell out of any others I've ever seen.

[CarburetorThompson]

Awesome job. It's inspiring when youtubers really do a proper job on their research.

[rich]

These mini documentaries of yours (no pun intended) are brilliant. I find it fascinating that a normal working bloke puts these great pieces together, for a hobby, that so many people can enjoy. Quite inspiring i must say. Very interesting, thanks.

[PauloGarcia-spws]

The Volkswagen beetles in Antarctica made me smile. They look so out of place. Never gets old watching you talk about Antarctic transportation.

[bennions]

I really like that you show both metric and imperial units on screen. It’s really handy especially for less common units like PSI!

[joystix]

"The Canadian outback"

I'm using this phrase from now on.

[davem.]

My brother owned a '61 Mini Minor Station Wagon (woodie) in the mid 60s. Indeed that 850 engine didn't have much power, and easily overheated. It was one of the first transverse engine configurations I'd ever seen. Amazing they made a Mini-Trac out of it. Wow, thank you for sharing this Calum and all research that went into it!

[bradyb]

Please keep your research coming - love the snow cruiser docs esp. Suggest history of biathlon?

[davidf]

Great stuff; would love to see more of your research on obscure snow vehicles and also the story of your beautiful-looking tractor!

[DbaybledD]

THIS is the content I came for, weird vehicles, engineer drawings, mad inventors

[covenantor]

Your footage of you wi’ your wee grey Fergie at the end brings back memories of my own dad’s wee grey Fergie on the farm and the stories he would tell.
As a youngster working for his father, the first tractor he worked with was a Fordson - 4mph, that was it!!!
Then his father bought a Fergie!
25mph - my father thought he was in heaven!!!
We emigrated to Australia when I was 5 and for the first 5 years we had a normal petrol Fergie.
Afterwards we moved to Queensland where the farm he bought had a dual fuel Fergie - petrol/kerosene!
It was started on petrol then run for the rest of the time on the cheaper kerosene. However for heavy work like plowing it would be switched back to petrol.
My cousin’s husband had a book put out by Ferguson on the 50th(?) anniversary of their founding.
One interesting fact was they wanted to exhibit the tractor in Kelvin Hall, but were refused at first because the administrators didn’t want oil on their wooden floors.
Ferguson got around that by draining the tractor of oil and flushing it out.
So they drove it into the hall completely devoid of oil and likewise back out when the exhibition was over.
They took the engine apart to see if there had been any damage done to it, but could not see any discernible wear at all !!!
I believe they even developed one to run on olive oil for their Middle East market.

[schweglerd]

I just found your channel and am genuinely excited to dive into your catalog of videos. Great stuff!

[NeutralGenericUser]

You are awesome! I love your videos and how humble you are when crediting the other authors and (under) crediting yourself. Your work is amazing and I can't wait to see more of your well researched videos! Thanks again for making these!

[coscorrodrift]

Absolutely brilliant video once again dude. Love seeing these projects of passion, props to Watto and Ian for doing the research and collecting those pictures, etc, and being open about it, and to you for publishing the story, and adding your touch. this type of work coming out of some niche curiosity and going on rabbit holes, etc is lovely to watch.

[thewataville]

Hi Calum, just wanted to say that I've been a longtime fan since you made the Mindcrack animations and made the small but fun Minecraft let's play series. Actually I used to left questions for your minecraft let's play when I was kid and complain that I wouldn't have internet access to watch your videos when going to Lapland haha.

It's great to see how you have managed to use your creativity and skills to create all these informative and well-edited documentaries! Thanks for producing these, It's so interesting what humans are capable to engineer when they need something to survive in harsh environments.

Greetings from Finland, there's a ton of snow here this year and it looks beautiful.

[alanlansdell]

Would love to see a photo of 4 scientists in full Antarctic cold weather clothing stuffed into the mini. Thanks for another great video.

[SergeiKotikov]

Hey, you fixed the Kharkovchanka pronounciation! Cheers from a Russian extreme cold vehicles fan!