Touareg team tackles Cape to Cape

The Volkswagen Cape to Cape Touareg team, from left, Matthias Prillwitz, Rainer Zietlow and Marius Biela.

The Volkswagen Cape to Cape Touareg team, from left, Matthias Prillwitz, Rainer Zietlow and Marius Biela.

Published Sep 17, 2014

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Wolfsburg, Germany - Three crazy Germans are about to attempt a new record time for the drive from the northern tip of Europe to the southern tip of Africa.

This Sunday, 21 September, off-road enthusiast Rainer Zietlow, photographer Marius Biela and rally driver Matthias Prillwitz will set off in a Volkswagen Touareg from North Cape in Norway to Cape Agulhas in South Africa.

They've mapped out a route - more than 17 000km long - that's 97 percent tarred, through Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

But that doesn't mean it's going to be easy; awaiting them are deep potholes in Sudan and Ethiopia, countless switchbacks in the African highlands and the infamous 'Road of Hell' peak with its corrugated, volcanic rock surface in northern Kenya. Temperatures range from freezing in Norway to 48 degrees Celsius in Sudan - and those are just the hazards they know about.

They'll be driving a new Touareg V6 TDI, essentially a standard production car except for a roll-cage, a row of rally spotlights across the front and two auxiliary fuel-tanks, giving it a driving range of more than 3000km between pit-stops.

The team has been preparing for this project for more than a year, including a scouting tour in the opposite direction that Zietlow and Biela drove in June, on which they defined critical points and mapped the whole route with GPS data.

During the marathon, they'll drive around the clock in a three-shift system that will only be interrupted for refuelling stops, meals and the usual delays at borders crossings.

Team leader Zietlow is no stranger to long-distance record-setting; he holds two already - the infamous Panamerica, from Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina to Point Barrow in Alaska, set in 2011 at 11 days and 17 hours, and the 'Russtralia' from Melbourne to St Petersburg, driven in 2012 in 17 days and 18 hours.

FOLLOW THE ADVENTURE

During the drive the team will post daily reports on their experiences on their website with photos and a video clip; the site also has a map of the route showing the position of the Touareg, which will be updated every five minutes, and Hewlett Packard has developed a free telemetry app (HP CapetoCape) that'll show the car's acceleration, braking and suspension movement in real time.

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