Nissan Altima on ice tracks? Before you laugh, take a look at this video

Something gets lost in the still photos Nissan dropped today of their “ice Altima”—or the “Altima-te AWD” as the automaker is calling it. In the still photos, the Nissan Altima on ice tracks looks like a winterized parody of the safari-car craze.

But if you take a moment to look at the slickly produced video Nissan dropped along with the press release announcing the project car’s reveal in Montreal, you might agree that it’s not such a joke after all.

The looping footage of an all-wheel-drive Altima, jacked up on triangular ice tracks and taking on wintry, mountainous, wilderness terrain, is actually pretty cool. So take a moment and give it a watch.

Nissan built the Altima-te as part of what the automaker calls a tradition of one-off project builds for the Montreal International Auto Show, the 2019 edition of which opened yesterday and runs through Sunday, January 27, at the Palais des Congrès de Montréal. That’s just a fancy, French way of saying “Montreal Convention Center.”

The ice Altima build adds a bit of extra fanfare to the launch the new 2019 Nissan Altima AWD, which Nissan is billing as “the first sedan in North America to offer All-Wheel Drive.”

In their general launch of the newly redesigned 2019 Nissan Altima last April, Nissan said that their intent was to “reignite interest in midsize sedans,” in a market climate where American automakers have been announcing cancellations right and left of their passenger-car models.

Nissan says that, in Canada, all-wheel drive is a standard feature for the 2019 Altima. But, alas, those cool triangular ice tracks on the one-off project build on display at the Montreal International Auto Show are not standard.

So don’t expect to be able to order an ice Altima-te at your neighborhood Nissan dealer.

Stop whining. Go out and build your own ice Altima. Or an ice anything, for that matter. If you like the concept of an all-wheeler or 4×4 with ice tracks, aftermarket suppliers can provide solutions.

One such producer is American Track Truck, manufacturer of a product line called Dominator Track Systems. And it so happens that American Track Truck is the source of the very ice tracks that Nissan used for their one-off build.

On the one-off Altima, the front and rear fenders were flared out seven inches on each side to make room for the Dominator track system from American Track Truck.

According to their website, American Track Truck was “established with a mission to create light/medium weight tracked vehicles, with heavy-duty capabilities, at affordable prices .” Applications for pickups, SUVs, AWD cars, ATVs, and UTVs are available.

Is all this making the creative wheels turn for your next big project build yet?

Hmmm: maybe an AWD Porsche 911 on ice tracks?