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Rolls-Royce Phantom across South America | Car Blogs | Car Magazine Online




Day 1.

CAR has high standards when it comes to long-distance South American road trips. Remember our expedition to the tip of South America in a Ferrari? Now we're off on our latest trip – in CAR Online's adventure from Argentina's Atlantic coast to Chile's Pacific shore. In a Rolls-Royce Phantom...


The South American continent is a perfect stage for humongous drives.
I met Fangio a few years ago and his tales of the mammoth long-distance races he used to do from Buenos Aires to La Paz were inspirational. And, on two wheels, Che Guevara soaked up mile after mile and bump after bump in Motorcycle Diaries.


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For the past three years, I have been able to persuade Rolls-Royce to supply a car for an increasingly adventurous series of global expeditions. The first one crossed Africa from the Indian Ocean coast of Mozambique/South Africa to the Atlantic Coast of Namibia. Then, to celebrate the return of Rolls to India after 50 years, we took a car to Rajasthan. And last year 12 top musicians drove Phantoms around the world from India and Australia to Miami and the Nurburgring.
Now, starting this week in Buenos Aires, fellow writer Warren Pole, photographer Anthony Cullen, TV cameraman Andy Wassall and I will drive a Phantom to the Pacific Coast of Chile, through the Atacama Desert and back over the Andes to Buenos Aires. You can follow our progress, day by day, only here at Cars website, news & reviews | First drives & car information | Car Magazine Online


From 007 film set to 'halfway up Everest'

En route, we'll play football with one of Argentina's biggest clubs, learn tango and polo and ride with Argentina’s cowboys, the gaucho. In Chile we'll visit the world’s largest telescope, the set for the new James Bond movie and cross the driest desert in the world off-road. Finally, before making the return dash back across Argentina, we'll drive on one of the highest roads in the world, taking the Phantom to the equivalent of halfway up Everest.

I will pick up the tale next week but the story starts in the Argentinean capital, Buenos Aires with Sky TV presenter and Mail on Sunday writer Warren Pole. He will file a daily blog from the back seat of his Rolls as it wafts across Latin America. I can’t write. I’m driving…
By Jeremy Hart

Day 2. Arrival in Buenos Aires

11am. Holed up as I am in the Alvear Palace hotel in Buenos Aires, an establishment renowned as perhaps the best hotel in South America, I’ve slept off my jet lag nicely since arriving yesterday. But although the Alvear has many luxurious distractions awaiting me as I fall out of bed, I couldn't give a monkey’s. The call has come through that the Phantom is ready and waiting at the docks. I’m calling a taxi now.

2pm. Phantom collection. Sweet mother of God it’s beautiful. In a metallic graphite grey with a sumptuous black interior, this Phantom is a gem. It’s easy to forget the presence these things have in the flesh, and a crowd gathers immediately. By the time I pull away, it’s already the star of a bevy of mobile phone snaps.

3.30pm. Back at the Alvear I’m thankful Rolls have supplied the short-wheelbase version as I squeeze the monstrous motor through the narrow entrance to the front door. On arrival the car is mobbed. This may become a familiar pattern over the next few.
By Warren Pole

Wow
What a car:O


Sooo beautiful and that last picture is amazing

Day 3. Buenos Aires

9.00am. First stop in the Phantom is the Avenida 9 de Julio in the centre of Buenos Aires. This is the widest avenue in the world and in morning rush hour it is a boiling, seething hotbed of motoring madness. Not the best place to familiarise yourself with one of the world’s most expensive cars – especially when the Argentineans drive with their hearts which means lots of horns, non-existent lane discipline and the consideration of mirrors regarded as a minor annoyance at best. After two hours of miraculously scrape-free work in the gridlock, photographer Cullen calls time and I breathe a massive sigh of relief. The Phantom feels damn big out here.

11am. Next we head to La Boca, home to the iconic Boca Juniors football team where Maradona made his name. An unmissable stop on the Buenos Aires tourist trail, this is also the poorest neighbourhood in town. In the Rolls-Royce, locals warn us to take a daytime visit only – unless we want to attract the kind of attention which could leave us walking home.

We stick to daylight, have no trouble at all despite the car being swamped at every opportunity, and slide back to the Alvear for a restorative beer.

By Warren Pole

Day 4 - Buenos Aires to Maximo Paz

Rolls Royce Phantom across America10.00am. On the road proper today. Or at least we would be if we could only get out of Buenos Aires. The traffic doesn't help, but our map reading is worse, and we lose an hour lapping the airport on the edge of town as we struggle to get to grips with Argentinean road signs (a rare commodity), and our so-called map (having not bought a proper one we're using one we found on a web page). Shame we don’t have the correct disc for the Rolls’ sat-nav.

3.00pm. Much swearing, U-turning and red light running later, we find ourselves rolling into the Villa Maria ranch, our home for the night. Covering over 1500-odd hectares this place is huge. Just driving from the main gate to the house inside takes five minutes, and on the way we pass endless herds of cattle, all expertly herded by gauchos (Argentinean cowboys) on horseback.

3.10pm. Somehow we persuade one of them to help us get some cattle around the car for pictures. He obliges and we get more than we bargained for when he sends a whole field of them (370 in all he later tells us) stampeding around the Phantom. The pictures are great, and miraculously the car remains unmarked. I can just imagine the phonecall to Rolls-Royce, having to explain how £250,000 of Phantom was battered and bruised by beef…



Day 5 - Maximo Paz to Junin

Rolls Royce Across America Day 52pm: After more photos around the ranch all morning and a huge gaucho lunch of steak, steak and more steak, at last there’s a chance to properly stretch the Phantom’s legs as we tool across several hundred miles of rural flatland to Junin, our next stop.

Out here the madness of city driving is gone, traffic is sparse, and the roads are straight as far as the eye can see. Which in an area so flat it makes Norfolk look positively mountainous, is a very long way indeed.

Above us the shining sky stretches in all directions and the views are breathtaking. The ragged roads out here, although shredded and rough in most places, can barely be felt or heard inside the Phantom’s cabin, and reclining in regal luxury inside our 90mph cruising palace is as effortless as breathing.

8pm: Pulling into Junin, the Rolls works its mojo once more as people all around stare, point, walk into lamp posts and almost crash into each other craning for a better look.

11pm: After dinner (yet more steak) we get our heads down. Tomorrow we’ve got the best part of 600 miles to clear, which on the two-lane strips which pass for motorways out here in the sticks, is going to make for one long day on the road. Surely they’ll reveal some chinks in the Rolls’ armour? So far, apart from its sheer size, value and ostentation, it’s been just about perfect for our south American adventure.

Day 6 - Junin, Argentina to Santiago, Chile

What my co-driver Warren did not tell you is that taking a £250,000 Roller across a South American frontier is as tense as walking through customs at Heathrow with a bar of gold stuffed in your smalls.

Thanks to the diplomatic skills of HM’s embassy in Santiago, the pride of Britain swooshed into the Chilean capital to an almost royal reception. Chile’s press demanded an audience with the British expeditionaries and the Santiago glitterati at the Ritz Carlton tripped over the tassles on their Gucci loafers as the Phantom pulled up outside.

Santiago is the Geneva of South America. Stylish but dull. It’s where you would stash your cash if you had to keep it in Latin America. Thankfully, the flipside is that the city works and is relatively safe. So much so, we dump the Rolls and walk to dinner on foot.



Day 7 - SANTIAGO-LA SERENA

After one night in Santiago, we are history. Almost a week since leaving the Atlantic behind at Buenos Aires, the Pacific beckons. Hiding below the Andes, Santiago is a couple of hours inland from the world’s largest body of water. Five thousand miles of water shoulder charges the Chilean coast, a whopping amount of energy…perfect for surfing.

Surftown South America is La Serena. Mile after mile of west-facing beaches act like a magnet to seawater and surfers. Strapping a longboard to the roof of the Roller, we make for the sand.

Bill Maher is an ex-pat Yank who moved to Chile for the peace and pipeline waves. He is old enough to warrant a bus pass but on a plank of fibreglass he walks the dog and hangs ten. He does not, however, use the word cowabunga.

“This is surf heaven,” he tells us later over a cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc and scallops from a nearby bay at which Daniel Craig has just finished filming Quantum of Solace. “Endless waves, endless summer and hardly anyone to bother you.”