THAT old adage ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going' could have been coined with the Toyota Hilux in mind.

Motor vehicles have tackled fire and ice in locations as hostile as Antartica and the Sahara, but nothing compares to meeting an erupting volcano head on.

But the rugged Toyota was there in the wake of the exploding rock and lava of Iceland's Eyjafallajökull volcano, just hours before its eruption brought chaos to the skies of Europe.

The pick-up that TV's Top Gear team were unable to destroy, and which was the first car to be driven across the Arctic to the Magnetic North Pole, proved the ideal transport for scientists racing to set up monitoring equipment before the mountain blew its top and sent a cloud of ash 30,000 feet into the sky.

The vehicles used for the expedition were prepared by specialist firm Arctic Trucks to the same extreme environment specification as the Hilux used by Jeremy Clarkson and James May for their polar expedition.

And as our dramatic pictures show, the Hilux - with its giant low pressure 38-inch tyres - relentlessly made its way through ice and snow towards the volcano's heart.