AUSTRALIA: AMERICAN MILLIONAIRE JIM RODGERS TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD IN A CONVERTED SPORTS CAR

Record ID: 862708

  • Title: AUSTRALIA: AMERICAN MILLIONAIRE JIM RODGERS TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD IN A CONVERTED SPORTS CAR
  • Date: 16th May 2001
  • Summary: STILL PHOTOGRAPH OF RODGERS SITTING ON BURNT-OUT MILITARY VEHICLE IN UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION IN AFRICA
  • Embargoed: 31st May 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: DARWIN, AUSTRALIA
  • City:
  • Country: Australia
  • Topics: Quirky,Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVAAQUW7DA29OE91SP8JPUD66P22
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: For those who would like to travel the world but don't fancy roughing it, an American couple may be able to provide some inspiration.
    American millionaire Jim Rodgers had a dream.
    He wanted to see the world from the comfort of his own car - preferably something a bit sporty.
    But he also realised that not all roads in the world are like those in his native US - so his car would need to be hard-working and hard-wearing.
    Nothing on the market fit the bill - so Rodgers' only choice was to make his own - adapting a Mercedes to cope with everything the roads of the world could throw at it.
    "I wanted to travel around the world in a sports car,"
    Rodgers said. "But you can't go around the world in a sports car because you have to have clearance off the ground, and you have to have four wheel drive, no one makes a four wheel drive sports car so we had to make one."
    Rodgers and his wife Parker Page began their three-year odyssey in Iceland in 1999, and have since travelled about 160,000 kilometres (100,000 miles), passed through 93 countries and driven for a total of nine straight months.
    "We've travelled about 160,000 kilometres, 93 countries, and we have been on the road for twenty-eight months," Rodgers said.
    Problems so far have included a jammed gearbox and a 12-day delay on the Sudanese-Egyptian border.
    Rodgers admits that his wife began having second thoughts while stuck in the desert.
    "We were stuck on the border between Sudan and Egypt for twelve days, in the desert, in the Sahara getting across the border," Rodgers said. "She was not happy then."
    The trip has no lofty humanitarian goal, but is merely a rich man pursuing his boyhood fantasy.
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