Screenshot: Harry’s Garage on YouTube
Road trips are perhaps my favourite thing about cars. I drove my Porsche 912E across the country and back last summer, and just yesterday my wife and I drove 805km to get some really good ice cream in San Francisco. It’s the pure joy of cars that they provide us the escape, the mobility, the freedom to go and do what we please when the moment strikes.
In a recent two-part YouTube special, Harry Metcalfe took his 1969 Rolls Royce Shadow, which he’d purchased for four-thousand pounds, from its home in the UK up and around to the tippy top of Norway to see the Northern Lights. Would you have the balls to do the same?
A few years ago this same road-tripping mad man took his Ferrari Testarossa to the Sahara desert, which was incredibly cool. This year, wanting to one-up that trip, he decided to go north. The inexpensive Rolls looks to be in pretty decent shape for the money, if I’m honest. It’s a beautifully simple shape that continues to inspire Rolls Royce designs today. The upright grille, quad headlights, and extra long trunk on this car exude class and sophistication. Harry performed a minor service on the car, and fitted it with snow tires, and it was ready for the over-4000-mile trip.
The first video in the pair shows the car making it to the Arctic Circle with minimal trouble. Harry does use a navigation system, but he relies heavily on proper old-school paper maps to do a lot of his routing. It’s an endearing quality that matches the vintage Rolls quite well. By the end of the first video, Harry has visited Hell in a literal sense, and continued on to the marking of the start of the Arctic Circle.
Picking up where the first video left off, the second piece of the pie features the drive further north to see the Northern Lights and snap some gorgeous photography. From there, it’s just a turn around and go home situation.
Harry’s trip is inspirational. I might have to pack up and head out for the open road again soon. Maybe I’ll head to the northern tip of Alaska just to say I’ve done it.