Globetrotting in a 133,000-mile Aston Martin
Lockdown has been responsible for many classic car projects being taken on, restarted, and even completed, but Phil and Will Churchill’s plan is a bit more ambitious than most. When the father and son duo couldn’t go anywhere, instead they started planning a round-the-world trip.
Phil says: “Inspiration started during the COVID lockdown when I started to read more travel books and watch things like Charley Boorman’s Long Way Down series. That led me to Jupiter’s Travels by Ted Simon, who went round the world on a Triumph motorcycle. I caught the car bug from my Dad and Will has got it from me, and I used to race a Porsche Boxster, and we’d been thinking about doing some sort of adventure in a car together. We hadn’t really planned out what it was going to be but had thought about the car. We wanted something with left-hand drive, manual gearbox, limited-slip differential, raised suspension, and underbody protection.’
Rather than looking at Land Rovers or Land Cruisers, Phil and Will’s eyes were drawn to something drastically different. Will explains: “We went to a Duke of London evening event for Porsches and out of the corner of my eye I spotted this Aston Martin. At first, I thought it was a courtesy car, and then Dad and I went over for a look. When we got home, we checked it out and realised the car had done a lot in its lifetime.”
Credit - Vantage World Tour
Phil adds: “That led us to buying the car and have it built from there as this car had everything on our wish list. Aston Martin raised the suspension in 2007 when it drove from Tokyo to London. We met Richard Meredith, who was the main driver of the car then. Before that, it had been Aston Martin’s boss at the time Ulrich Bez’s company car and had covered 30,000 miles in its first year criss-crossing from the company’s headquarters at Gaydon to Mr Bez’s home in Germany.
“It was used harder in that year than most Astons do in five or six years. Then it was used to drive 30,000 miles in a month as part of Project 30,000 to mark Aston Martin’s 30,000th car being built. Thirty Aston Martin employees took turns to drive it, starting at the Nürburgring where the company had just been competing in a race. The car ended up on Aston’s stand at that year’s British Motor Show alongside the car that had been racing at the Nürburgring. It’s now just pushed through 133,500 miles.”
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Car sorted, Phil and Will began planning the route. Phil continues: “I got chatting to a chap called Ben Coombs, who wrote a book called Pub2Pub about his adventures in a TVR. This was Christmas 2021 and he gave us the confidence this sort of trip could be achieved. Our plan was to head east through Europe, Russia, Mongolia, China, but all of that went by the wayside with the war in Ukraine. Then I tried to find a way through the Middle East and found a ferry that ran from Venice, and we could head through Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and then a boat across to Pakistan.”
“Unfortunately, that roll-on, roll-off ferry stopped operating and curtailed that route. Then my wife said, ‘I’ve been telling you for months, go west…’ I should have listened to my wife, of course, and realised it was a much better plan.”
These plans included visiting a NASCAR race in the US, which Phil and Will have ticked off since leaving their starting point at the RAC Club on London’s Pall Mall in February 2023. They then collected the car from New York after it went across the Atlantic by boat from Liverpool.
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If you’re wondering how Will can find time off from school to drive around the world with his dad, this is the clever part of the Vantage World Tour. Rather than tackling the whole trip in one chunk, they are planning it in bite-sized sections to fit in with Will’s education. They plan to head back out to Mexico in October to complete the next stage of their epic trip.
“We’ll pick up the car from Mexico when Will is on his October holiday, and we’ll drive on through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and finish at the Panama Canal. Then, in 2024, Will has his exams and after that we’ll collect the car to complete the rest of South America before the car goes on a boat to New Zealand to just keep going. We reckon it will take between four and six years to do the whole thing, but we’re up for the challenge.”
Credit - Vantage World Tour
Part of the Vantage World Tour challenge is to raise at least £24,901 for a mental health charity. If that sounds like a very precise amount of money, Phil has the answer: “We’re raising money for CALM, which is the Campaign Against Living Miserably that raises awareness of men’s suicide. This is where the idea for the amount came from as it’s 24,901 miles around the Equator, so our target is to cover at least that mileage so we can legitimately say we’ve driven round the world.”
Given the Churchill’s Aston Martin has already covered many times that distance in its busy life, the pair are confident it will be up to the job. Even so, Phil has spent a lot of time putting together a spares package to carry in the car with help from a local specialist garage. They have also looked at every detail of the logistics and Phil added: “We’re trying to find something fun to do on each day rather than just cover lots of miles, so we’ll aim to drive around 250 miles per day. I’d also like to stay in a hotel whenever possible for a bit of comfort.”
Even so, it’s a huge undertaking but not one that daunts the Churchills. Phil says: “By taking on the trip in the way we are, it means we don’t have to put the rest of our lives on hold. It also means we can plan the next leg as it comes up rather than having to think about the whole journey in one go. The trip will have its moments, good and bad, but we just have to keep the bigger picture in mind.”
Read more about the Vantage World Tour here: www.vantageworldtour.com
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