The fellows at Australian website CarAdvice set out their task weeks ago: drive around Australia in the quickest possible time. They dubbed the journey the ‘Highway 1 to Hell.’
Four of them left Brisbane on Monday, June 15, zeroing the speedometer in the Toyota LandCruiser Sahara they bought new for the journey.
Five days, 13 hours and 43 minutes later they arrived back in Brisbane, beating the previous record of six days, 8 hours and 52 minutes, set some years ago by a team from Motor magazine. The CarAdvice group did a complete lap of Australia; the Motor team went inland direct to Mt Isa.
At the end of the trip the Land Cruiser’s speedometer read 14,280km. The big four-wheel-drive used 2284 litres of diesel and the team averaged 2600km a day over four six-hour shifts.
The project’s brainchild, Jay Gordon, said he pursued the idea of setting a new record to prove it was possible. “I’m obsessed with these kinds of records and I thought I could beat it, but the more you talk about it, the more you realise there is only one way to prove it,” he said.
As for how the LandCruiser fared throughout the journey, Gordon said it was only ever turned off for refuelling and the only issue that presented itself was an intermittent oil pressure light. Other than that the Toyota didn’t miss a beat.
“Apart from the 10 times to be refuelled, we only turned it off once in Darwin for a bathroom break and live (video) stream. All other stops were roadside and brief to change drivers or empty our bladder.”