Bud King on Ice!

By Julian Bayley

This top fuel dragster is not about to break any speed records but it has to be the coolest ‘hot' car around. Created by Iceculture of Hensall with the cooperation of the Grand Bend Motorplex, the car was built from three tons of ice in a freezer studio. It when was dismantled and transported to The Metro Convention Center in Toronto where it was re-assembled for the Canadian Events and Meetings Expo. The theme of the Expo was ‘Power'.

A little artistic license was taken with the design to make sure the dragster would fit in the 20-foot long booth. (It would normally require 33 feet).

Track Manager of the Motorplex, Ron Biekx, provided a scale model, technical support and kept a watchful eye on the project while Heidi Bayley, General Manager of Iceculture, developed drawings for the carvers to follow when producing the life-size version. Ron gave the finished design a nod of approval before it left Hensall for the display.

At the Convention Center, individual components were fused together to complete the dragster in front of a 20 foot long wall of ice sporting the red, yellow, and green colors of the electronic ‘staging tree' at the start of the track.

For the uninitiated, a top fuel dragster costs about $250,000 and is powered by a 7,000 hp nitromethane-burning engine. It can attain speeds of up to 330 mph in a quarter mile - that's a little over four seconds - great performance but not too impressive when it comes to gas mileage -- 13 gallons every time it runs down the track. Four shower heads turned on full blast couldn't keep up with that fuel consumption! The Canadian Events and Meetings Expo ran for two days, March 28 and 29, 2001.