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One Last Ride for Antarctica's 'Ivan the Terra Bus'

After more than 30 years as an iconic fixture of the polar research station, this beloved bus is bidding farewell to the southern continent.

Even those that haven’t had the pleasure of riding inside of him—in comfortable seats, surrounded by wood paneling and the pleasant sounds of jazz warbling from his internal speakers as he rumbles slowly along the ice—have heard of him and probably walked right past him, sitting pretty near McMurdo Station ’s cafeteria in his iconic orange-and-white livery. Eli Duke / CC BY-SA 2.0 Eric Chevreuil, a longtime USAP worker in various departments including supply and IT, was distressed to find out during the 2024–25 summer season that Ivan’s fate had been sealed. The beloved Terra Bus had apparently been slated for auction at Port Hueneme, California, due to be inevitably scrapped for metal value or, Chevreuil imagined, bought cheaply to decorate someone’s roadside farm equipment store and then left to rust.

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