Crossing one of Australia’s inhospitable desert regions would be cause for celebration for most people, but a trio of adventurers driving a modified Volkswagen Amarok 4x4 ute recently crossed all 10 Aussie deserts in Guiness World Record-setting time.

The team, comprising German long-distance driver and adventurer Rainer Zietlow and cameraman Marius Biela, plus Australian Brad Howe, exceeded their own forecast of traversing 10 deserts in 10 days by managing the feat in a remarkable six days, 17 hours and 15 minutes

Driving the Volkswagen Amarok V6 in shifts and with one person ‘resting’ in the cramped back seat, which also doubled as storage for essential equipment that didn’t fit in the tray, the trio bested the previous record of approximately 14 days, set by a rider on a motorcycle.

Leaving from Maree in South Australia, the modified Amarok Style V6 was driven across the Great Victoria, Great Sandy, Tanami, Simpson, Gibson, Little Sandy, Strzelecki, Sturt Stony, Tirari and Pedirka deserts, covering a total of 6,421km by the time of its arrival in Alice Springs.

Ahead of the journey, the team added underbody protection, upgraded springs and dampers, a suspension lift kit, high-intensity driving lights and light bars, a 160-litre long-range tank, and Kumho MT71 off-road tyres, to the otherwise standard ute.

Remarkably, despite driving almost constantly over some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet for nearly a week, the team suffered just a single flat tyre.

Speed limited by rough terrain

Other notable expedition statistics included the fact the Amarok used 1,199 litres of diesel and managed an average speed of 39km/h, although at times the team were forced to drive as slow as 7km/h to manage the punishing corrugations and rough terrain.

Speaking at a launch event for the newly released VW Amarok 10 Deserts Limited Edition model, Mr Howes said the team had periods of driving for days without seeing other humans, and that their longest break without driving was three hours while they refuelled and refreshed in remote Wiluna, WA.

At one stage the crew blazed an overgrown track between Innamincka and Birdsville for a grazier that hadn’t been used for four years, while on another occasion the heavily laden vehicle became bogged on a salt lake in the Simpson Desert, requiring all 500kg of cargo to be unloaded at 2am in the morning, followed by a three-hour dig to extract it from the axle-deep bog.

Mr Howe also recalled how he donned rugby headgear to allow him to grab some sleep while bouncing from side to side in the rear seat, and a particularly savage section of corrugations in the Great Victoria Desert that lasted for a punishing six hours.

While it was Mr Howe’s first Guinness World Record, his German driving companions were fresh from having set another record weeks earlier, driving a factory-standard ID.4 GTX electric SUV to create the largest GPS drawing made by a battery electric vehicle, inscribing “70 Year VeeDub” on a 23,849km journey across Australia.

Volkswagen Australia has released a less highly modified 300-unit limited Amarok ute to mark the occasion, dubbed the 10 Deserts Limited Edition, which is based on the Amarok Life model grade.

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