'Definitely the best book ever written about crossing Asia in a red corvette.' - Ralf the Wonder Llama.
Okay, that's not a real quote. We'll come clean with you - we made it up. But as we haven't actually released the middle part of our Road Trip Trilogy yet, we're currently a bit short on glowing quotes for The Road to the East, unlike our other two books.
So, why is the Corvette book mentioned here if it's not actually for sale yet? Simple - it's mentioned because it will be available very soon. The first draft was completed during the great Covid lockdown of 2020, and we're currently editing the script with the goal of releasing it in the first half of 2021, so hopefully, this year you'll be able to spend your next holiday getting stuck into The Road to the East.
But what can you expect if you do find yourself reading it during the glorious post-lockdown days of spring? Well, we'll let you into a little secret. While the main subject of the book is the story of a very simple idea - V8Nam; get a V8, and drive it to Vietnam - this book goes far beyond just telling the story of that rather daft adventure. It also seeks to answer the question of how someone would come to consider such a journey to be a completely rational undertaking, by looking at what led up to V8Nam. From those first uncertain adventures which led us to V8Nam's start line, to the adventure which played out when we fired up the small block Chevy V8 and headed east, it's all there.
The Vehicle
Car - 1990 Chevrolet Corvette C4
Engine - 5,700cc small-block V8
Gearbox - 4-speed automatic
Power - 300hp / 223KW
Weight - 1470kg
Mileage - 70,000 miles @departure
Modifications - 288 cam, performance ironheads & headers, dixie horn
The Aim
V8Nam - a drive from England to Vietnam, with a V8.
Distance - 14,000 miles
Continents - two
Countries - 21
Deserts - Two
Timescale - Five months
The Road to the East is due for release in 2021. For updates on its release, sign up to our mailing list using the form at the bottom of the page.
The resulting book is a celebration of automotive adventures big and small, near and far. So varied is its subject matter that you never quite know what's coming next, as the prose jumps from the Tibetan Plateau, framed by the Corvette's windscreen, to a Fiat 126 battling through the Arctic winter, or from a three-wheeled rickshaw in Kathmandu to a trip across the frozen Baltic Sea in a Jaguar XJ6. Yep, from Burmese Monks to Kazakh nightclubs; from Moroccan souqs to Icelandic thunderstorms and from flimsy Honda motorbikes to overlanding Rolls Royces, The Road to the East is shaping up to be a love letter to automotive escapades which pretty much has it all.
When you read The Road to the East, you'll discover that no adventure is too big or too small to get the enthusiasm for the open road flowing, and no vehicle is exempt from being a potential source of amazing memories. Despite the fact that the book is focused on a rather unsubtle, souped up Corvette, if there's one thing you'll take from it, it's that automotive adventure isn't about the size of your wallet or motor. It's about your state of mind. Though we'll level with you; having an old Corvette and five months off work certainly helps.