The Transglobal Car Expedition, the first-ever surface-based circumnavigation of the Earth via the Poles, returned to New York City on April 27, where they had begun their 16-month, 92,586-kilometer adventure in January 2024.
The team recapped their incredible achievements at a press conference Monday at the Classic Car Club Manhattan, an auto enthusiast’s paradise located in a former United States Lines freight pier on the Hudson River. In a conference live-streamed globally, they reflected on the incredible achievement, both as a scientific research effort and as a human achievement. They also shared a teaser of an upcoming short film recapping the trip.
Left to right: Alexei Safonov, Vasily Shakhnovsky, Vasily Elagin, Andrew Comrie-Picard, Cedric Noujaim
The expedition began at The Explorer’s Club on 70th Street in Manhattan on January 9, 2024. The Explorer’s Club traditionally sends its members on scientific expeditions with a numbered copy of the Club’s flag, and they handed the team Flag #241 in the Club’s Clark Room last year. As the grand journey concluded, the team returned the flag in a small ceremony on Tuesday morning.
The expedition was undertaken by a core team of experienced explorers, led by Vasily Shakhnovsky. In addition to the overland adventure element, there was a set of significant scientific goals. These included an analysis of Arctic ice thickness measured continuously across the ice sheet through the North Pole, the measurement of cosmic radiation from the distant heavens, studies on light pollution, and analysis of human physiology in extreme cold. The expedition even resulted in the first-ever satellite photograph of cars taken at the North Pole.
The task was accomplished by using a continuous chain of terrain-specific vehicles, each best suited to the vastly different locations that the expedition visited. The route combined extreme polar treks in the Arctic and Antarctic with overland transits of Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The oceans were bridged by ship, creating a truly surface-only journey.
For the long transcontinental legs, the team used mostly-stock Ford Expeditions. In Antarctica and parts of the Arctic, they utilized Ford F-350 trucks, customized for the terrain by polar expert Emil Grimsson at Arctic Trucks. In the ice pack of the Arctic, they used the Yemelya, a six-wheeled vehicle built explicitly for the region by team member Vasily Elagin. The expedition also frequently involved a hybrid Ford F-150 prepared by Arctic Trucks.
Unfortunately, the team’s fleet of Ford Expeditions could not make it to the finish line in New York. The team hit unexpected border complications in Mexico, which trapped the vehicles in customs limbo. Looking to complete the expedition on schedule, the core team members continued to New York in other cars, maintaining the route’s spirit of multi-vehicle surface transportation.
The expedition wrapped up with a small dinner in Midtown Manhattan, with speeches by many team members. They reminisced on the scale of the journey, and the feeling of it coming to an end after over half a decade of planning and testing.
There were also reflections that this may be the only group to ever achieve this feat. The polar regions are changing, a finding confirmed by the expedition’s data. The season to traverse them is getting shorter, and it may eventually become too short to successfully transit these continents in one continuous go without hitting weather, ice thickness, and transportation issues.
Images: Transglobal Car Expedition, Greg Fitzgerald
Listen More: Overland Journal Podcast: Andrew Comrie-Picard on the Power of Self-Belief and the Transglobal Car Expedition
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