Anyone who dreams of superhuman strength can forget the gym membership or having to be in a gamma ray accident, just get yourself an exoskeleton like this Canadian inventor who lifted a car using his home-made Iron Man suit.

Jason Hobson, who goes by the name The Hacksmith on his YouTube channel, performed an extraordinary feat of strength by lifting a Mini Cooper a foot off the ground with ease. Hobson heaved the rear of the car up in the air with his home-made Tony Stark-style technology – a powered exoskeleton suit that is attached to his legs.

The result saw Hobson crouch behind the car, which was hooked up via chains to the suit, and as he stood upright the exoskeleton's mechanical legs and pneumatic cylinders took the weight of the 1,145kg car.

"Getting the strength to lift a car was quite easy. I had a pair of 63mm bore diameter pneumatic cylinders, which at 125PSI are capable of lifting over 800lbs a piece," Hobson explained in a blog.

In the posted video it also showed Hobson tinkering with his other super-strength exoskeleton designs including an upper body frame that gave him the power to curl an 80kg barbell without breaking a sweat as well as take the strain of a staggering 220kg payload with no struggle at all.

Hobson explains his current design is a little crude-looking and is working towards combining his upper and lower body exoskeletons into a more streamlined, fully-functional, real-life Iron Man suit that will allow the wearer to run. Although he does admit "we don't possess arc reactor technology required to power an exoskeleton for any reasonable length of time".

Forms of exoskeleton suits are currently being employed in some industries with dock workers in Korea wearing powered body frames to carry heavy steel as well as military research and development departments working on designs to take the fatigue off soldiers carrying heavy equipment. The US military is supposedly developing a suit called Talos, which will provide full body armour, in-helmet heads-up-display of what's going on around them and the super-strength to carry more powerful firearms and break down doors.

When Hobson talks about the potential use of exoskeleton suits he excitedly explains: "We already use many tools that take advantage of leverage and gear ratios, so what if we could create an exoskeleton that did what the bicycle did for transportation, but instead allow humans to achieve superhuman levels of strength for fields like construction, disaster relief, the military, and every other task that pushes past what our own bodies can handle?"