This father and son are driving around the world in an Aston Martin

We love an unlikely adventure vehicle at Detour and the Aston Martin Vantage that Phil and Will Churchill have chosen to circumnavigate the globe definitely ticks the box.

The father and son are also taking an unconventional approach to their adventure, breaking the 24,901-mile journey into two or three-week legs that can accomplished in work and university holidays, which means the excitement will potentially last five years or more.

Phil tells Detour that he’s always been a road trip fan, having previous driven through the Swiss Alps, around the lakes of Italy and the coast of Scotland’s NC500, but while he was forced to stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic he hatched a rather more ambitious plan.

“I started re-watching Ewen McGregor and Charlie Boorman’s Long Way Round and Long Way Up and then I read Jupiter's Travels, by Ted Simon, which is just amazing. The more I read and watched the more I thought that we should go and do something,” he explains.

Phil was thinking that an early Porsche Boxster would be ideal as he had raced one and knew it well, but fate had other ideas. During a visit to classic car dealer Duke of London Will spotted a 2005 Aston Martin V8 Vantage in the yard and it would prove to be perfect.

The car in question was one of the earliest made and it had already had its mettle (and metal) tested in a number of factory-backed expeditions. In the summer of 2006 30 Aston Martin employees drove it 30,000 miles in just 30 days, mostly on Germany’s unlimited autobahn network. One year later, after receiving some modifications by Aston Martin Works it was dispatched to Japan from where it was driven a further 10,000 miles across the Asian Highway from Tokyo to London, setting a new record of 49 days in the process.

Having been sold to raise money for UNICEF the next owner continued to pile on the miles and by the time Phil came across it the odometer had ticked over 120,000 miles.

“It was the perfect specification,” says Phil. “It was just what we were looking for, which was left hand drive, limited slip differential, manual gearbox, raised suspension and underbody protection, all the stuff we needed.”

With the vehicle sorted, planning could begin in earnest. When Phil bumped into experienced automotive adventurer, and Detour regular, Ben Coombs while watching an episode of Top Gear being filmed, he realised that his driving dreams could become reality.

“I’d already read all his books so I started chewing his ear on how does this work? How does that work? And ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! I thought, right, we can do this.”

Breaking up the journey into nine sections and leaving the car in a secure location at the end of each leg with months in between is the only practical way that Phil and Will could manage such a trip around work and education commitments.

The adventure begins on 26 February when the Vantage will be loaded onto a ship at Liverpool, bound for New York. A month later the Churchills will take the wheel, arriving in Mexico three weeks later. They will then collect the again in October aiming to reach Panama from where the car will have to be flown or shipped to Columbia since the Darien Gap remains impenetrable by car. 2024’s route will take them down through South America to the tip of Tierra del Fuego and then the car will be shipped to New Zealand. Australia, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Dubai and a final, as yet unplanned leg to London will complete the journey.

Detour will be following the Churchill’s progress and you can find out more on the Vantage World Tour website.

Words Nik Berg Twitter | Instagram
Photography Mike Venables

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