Autoblog

Tucked away in a green, waterfall-riven valley between Akureyri and Husavik, Iceland is the hamlet of Ystafell (who-stuh-fel is the closest we can get to proper pronunciation). Akureyri has some of the best nightlife in Iceland, while Husavik has whales and a museum dedicated to things unmentionable on a family site. That leaves the Transport Museum at Ystafell practically unnoticed, which is a shame, because features two barns full of unlikely vehicles, each with an authentic Icelandic story. Follow the jump for the tale of our recent visit, and check out the gallery of hi-res photos below.

Click above for high-res gallery of Iceland's "jeeps"

Not too long ago, we posted a bit about Iceland's "jeeps". This blogger has just returned from ten days in the North Atlantic with those very brutes, and they're every bit as massive -- and cool -- as they look. We even got to go for a spin in one, get a look at another one, and take pictures of a whole bunch more. What was it like? The same thing we said before: "big-wheel badness." Follow the jump for the story, and be sure to check out the gallery of hi-res images below.

In Iceland, the leviathan you see in the picture above is called a "jeep." Here in the U.S., it would be called a massively tricked out F-350 Super Duty, or probably just "monster truck." The 6,000 members of Iceland's 4x4 club use them to explore the barely reachable sections of the island nation, trusting 4-foot-high studded tires and a bevy of custom modifications to get them back to civilization.

The problem is that Icelanders are having their own currency issues, with a free-fall even worse than the dollar's being just the start. When gas is almost $8 per gallon, that puts a fill-up somewhere around the $500 mark. And that puts a hurting on everything -- especially when you have to spend even more money getting your truck hauled out of the ice it just fell through. Not that any of this really stops them, because, well, there isn't much else to do in Iceland. So follow the link and check out the trucks in the slideshow. It's big-wheel badness.

[Source: Wall Street Journal]