Some of the most amazing custom builds come to be because someone is looking to show off or to simply act out on whatever creative impulses they’re under at the moment. This is no different.
Lexus likes to market itself as a carmaker that thinks outside of the box and aims for perfection in whatever it’s undertaking. So, towards the end of 2015, it set out to prove that its team of engineers and outside partners could create the world’s first SUV to roll on wheels and tires made of frozen water.
The custom project didn’t involve any work on the car, a newly-introduced NX, except to have it deep-frozen for five full days at under 30 degrees Celsius, because the UK (the place where the stung was made real) was having a very warm winter that year. However, the process to create the ice wheels and tires alone is impressive enough to warrant a second look after five years – and a notable mention in autoevolution’s Custom Builds Month section.
The NX with the coolest wheels in the world, in the most literal sense, wouldn’t have been possible without help from the team at Hamilton Ice Sculptors in London. They worked with Lexus engineers because, despite what your eyes might be telling you in the gallery attached and the videos at the bottom of the page, some trickery was involved.
Ice could never support a 2.2-ton vehicle and everyone involved knew that. So, engineers had to recreate all the metal supporting parts, including the rims, in acrylic, to which ice was attached. Still, the fact that the car was able to start at the first touch of a button after being put on ice for five days and then roll down a London street is impressive.
Lexus never said how far the NX got on its ice shoes or how fast it was able to travel, but the answer to both question is probably “not much.” As an experiment on how Lexus uses “advanced technologies with the best craftsmanship to achieve outstanding results” the iced-out NX was a success.
The project took three months of hard work and used a combination of CAD designs and multi-axis machining, laser-scanning and traditional ice-carving by hand. It was the ultimate show-off of that year, and to this day, represents custom work that lives on for its merits – if not in physical form.
The custom project didn’t involve any work on the car, a newly-introduced NX, except to have it deep-frozen for five full days at under 30 degrees Celsius, because the UK (the place where the stung was made real) was having a very warm winter that year. However, the process to create the ice wheels and tires alone is impressive enough to warrant a second look after five years – and a notable mention in autoevolution’s Custom Builds Month section.
The NX with the coolest wheels in the world, in the most literal sense, wouldn’t have been possible without help from the team at Hamilton Ice Sculptors in London. They worked with Lexus engineers because, despite what your eyes might be telling you in the gallery attached and the videos at the bottom of the page, some trickery was involved.
Ice could never support a 2.2-ton vehicle and everyone involved knew that. So, engineers had to recreate all the metal supporting parts, including the rims, in acrylic, to which ice was attached. Still, the fact that the car was able to start at the first touch of a button after being put on ice for five days and then roll down a London street is impressive.
Lexus never said how far the NX got on its ice shoes or how fast it was able to travel, but the answer to both question is probably “not much.” As an experiment on how Lexus uses “advanced technologies with the best craftsmanship to achieve outstanding results” the iced-out NX was a success.
The project took three months of hard work and used a combination of CAD designs and multi-axis machining, laser-scanning and traditional ice-carving by hand. It was the ultimate show-off of that year, and to this day, represents custom work that lives on for its merits – if not in physical form.