Thursday, April 30, 2009

Aston Martin "Project 30,000" car will drive from Tokyo to London




Last year, Aston Martin employees shuttled in and out of Germany as they worked to put 30,000 miles on a Vantage in 30 days. Now comes word that Aston is placing the "Project 30,000" car in the hands of school teacher Richard Meredith and travel specialist Phil Colley, who will drive it from Tokyo to London using the Asian Highway.


The six-week journey is being run in collaboration with the UN and is intended to promote road safety in Asia while raising money for charity at the same time. The car now has over 100,000 miles on its odo and is liveried with a map of the Asian Highway route on its roof and sports the make Roads Safe logo and URL on its bodywork. The only modifications made for it in preparation for the trip are a slightly raised suspension, reinforced sump guard and full spare.

If you think that driving to any point on the European or Asian mainland from Tokyo sounds like pretty a neat trick, you're not alone. We looked at the Wikipedia entry on the highway, however, and it confirmed that the AH1 portion uses a ferry line running between Fukuoka, Japan and Pusan, South Korea. While driving through 15 countries sounds like it could be rough, doing it in an Aston seems much more palatable.

More details in the press release after the jump.