First Car Crossing
What is believed to be the first car crossing of the full extent (East to West) of the new Asian Highway was achieved by Britons Richard Meredith and Phil Colley in 2007 driving an Aston Martin.
Following the AH1 and the AH5 from Tokyo (the Highway grid's furthest point East) to Istanbul (furthest West), they drove a total of 12089 km (7512 miles) before joining the European motorway network for another 3259 km (2025 miles) to London.
Including ferry trips and customs clearance delays, the journey took 49 days and crossed 18 countries.
The completed route was verified by Aston Martin and the UN's Asian Commission (UNESCAP) in Bangkok, whose director of transport and tourism Barry Cable confirmed "I can warrant that, to my best knowledge, this was the first car to undertake this journey".
Eurowatch in London provided independent corroboration by tracking the car's location from satellite position reports and plotting the vehicle's location throughout the journey.
Meredith, a travel author and veteran of distance-driving events, agreed to make the attempt after attending the Asian Highway Treaty's "coming into force" ceremony in Bangkok on July 4, 2005.
He was lent an Aston Martin v8 Vantage which had previously been the personal transport of the company's chief executive Dr Ulrich Bez and recruited Phil Colley, a linguist and travel expert from Kennington, South London, to be his co-driver. The car was shipped out to Tokyo by the company and they set off on June 25.
Although the trip was facilitated by UNESCAP through its member nations, there were still extensive problems including enforced detours and interminable customs clearance delays in China, pot-holed roads in Kazakhstan and leaded-only fuel in Uzbekistan. In Tbilisi, Georgia, the journey car crashed after being left on a hillside with its handbrake unsecured.
When the record-setting car returned a welcome-home reception was staged by Aston Martin at the Park Lane Hotel in London and Meredith later received a civic award from his home town of Milton Keynes.
The car was sold at auction in December 2007 by Bonhams and the proceeds donated to UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. In March 2008 a total collection of 83,000 euros was presented to UNICEF China for a campaign to reduce child deaths on the roads of Beijing.
Read more about this topic: Asian Highway Network
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