Watch a Very Brave Man Fly a Lawn Tractor High Above the Alps

None of the real-life Mario Kart simulators out there offer the ability to glide, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to live out your fantasy of soaring far above the ground while riding a small motorized vehicle. You just need to get creative, which is exactly what a team that entered the annual Coupe Icare in France did last year. An intrepid competitor lined up on the runway with a lawn tractor hooked up to a paragliding wing.

Held annually since 1974 near Grenoble, in the French Alps, the Coupe Icare is dedicated to flying. It’s a competitive event divided into several categories including paragliding, sky-diving, kite flying, and even boomerangs. If you’ve got a twin-prop Cessna, the event isn’t for you—but if you’ve got a hot-air balloon, you’re good. The competition isn’t limited to who can go the fastest or stay in the air the longest. There’s a costume contest that brings together some of the coolest and weirdest things you’ve ever seen fly, and that’s how a lawn tractor went airborne.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t look like preparing a piece of landscaping equipment for its first documented flight was a difficult endeavor. The hooks that the paragliding wing’s ropes are tied to are bolted to a home-made subframe, but beyond that it’s seemingly a standard lawn tractor that you can find on just about every farm in the countryside. It’s dented, it’s rusty, and a picture from the event suggests it required at least some repairs before going up, up, and away. With that said, we can’t help but wonder how the tractor was tested before the event—assuming it was.

The tractor’s take-off (a phrase I never thought I’d write) was captured on video and it’s nothing short of epic, though you could also argue it’s the kind of thing that would scare aliens away if they tried to land here. You can hear the angry whimper of an idle over a chorus of cheers and the audibly excited announcer. The big wing rises as the tractor sets off and begins speeding down the hill. Will it fly? Hell yes! Slowly but surely, it sets off and glides like the world’s biggest and most awkward bird. It’s surprisingly steady, all things considered, and even the announcer is flabbergasted by the sight of a flying tractor. “Hallucinant,” he repeats while laughing, which loosely translates to “unbelievable” in French.

Did it land? We assume so, fingers crossed, but the 17-second video doesn’t show how the flight ended.

The next edition of the Coupe Icare is scheduled to start on September 16, 2025, and we’re looking forward to seeing what oddities take to the sky this year.

Got tips or experience in making odd vehicles fly? Reach out at tips@thedrive.com

The post Watch a Very Brave Man Fly a Lawn Tractor High Above the Alps appeared first on The Drive.