Article published March 25, 2009
Jeep creeps across Siberia
Expedition down to its last Wrangler
A German-led expedition set out with three Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicons on a 27,000-mile journey from Paris to New York - the hard way. Only one, much repaired, vehicle forges on.
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By LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE
BLADE BUSINESS WRITER
An ambitious bid to drive three Toledo-made Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicons from Paris to New York the long way is crawling along the Arctic Ocean's Siberian shoreline with the last of the three vehicles partially disabled.
The German-led expedition team that drove off from the Paris Auto Show in October now finds itself with 10 days of emergency supplies in the middle of an abnormally brutal Russian winter - slowly crawling the last 250 miles to the Bering Strait.
"It is not a quit right now. The expedition stopped [last weekend] due to the difficult circumstances," expedition spokesman Juergen Malieske said this week in an e-mail to The Blade from the expedition's headquarters in Limburg, Germany. "We need to consider our possibilities and necessary actions how to go on."
The team of adventure-seekers is led by Matthias Jeschke, 38, a father of two who in 2007 broke a world altitude record for production vehicles by driving a Wrangler to near the summit of Ojos del Salado, a volcano in Chile, to an altitude of 21,837 feet.
Speaking to The Blade in December while driving outside Minsk, Belarus, Mr. Jeschke said the Toledo-made four-door Wranglers were "the strongest car I could have on the expedition."
But more than 18,000 miles into a 27,000-mile trip, Mr. Jeschke wrote Sunday that his team had retreated after equipment problems back to Vancarem, a village on Russia's northern coast. The expedition's final Jeep was towed back to the village by a chain-driven vehicle. Now, with some fixes, the journey is again on for the Bering Strait, Mr. Jeschke wrote."We try to leave Vacarem as soon as possible before the storm starts over again," Mr. Jeschke wrote in a short note yesterday. "We fixed [the remaining Wrangler] rough-and-ready in 12 hours outside night work. Now it is at least movable. We literally try to punch through to Egvekinot by front drive only. Cross fingers for us. 300km of snow drifts without any other vehicle."
Two of the three Jeeps that began the expedition Oct. 1 have fallen. One was involved in a traffic accident in Italy that left it disabled. According to Mr. Jeschke's online journal, the second vehicle's journey ended Saturday night, when the differential on its after-market axle broke under extreme conditions - the latest in a series of failures of the same part during the expedition, Mr. Jeschke reported. The axles are one of several special modifications made to the Wranglers before the journey began.
In addition to crossing Europe and the vast majority of Asia towing trailers with massive outriggers to allow the Jeeps to traverse the 56 miles of the Bering Strait, the Jeeps were carrying their own fuel. Much of the last 3,000 miles across Siberia has been traversed through heavy snowfalls and without the benefit of roads.
The team had hoped to reach the Bering Strait - where it would attempt to traverse ice to Wales, Alaska. The brutal Siberian weather has meant temperatures regularly at 61 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Updates on the trip are at the Web site www.pny2009.com.
The expedition had expected to roll into New York City at the end of May and had promised to stop in Toledo on the way from Chicago to Chrysler LLC headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich.
Contact Larry P. Vellequette at:
lvellequette@theblade.com
or 419-724-6091.
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