Start Line In Sight For Renault Trucks’ Epic 20,000Km

The route is set, the trucks are fuelled and the drivers are ready –  it’s now just four days before Renault Trucks follow in the footsteps of Marco Polo by taking on the legendary tracks of the Silk Road.

On 2 April, 2005, a caravan of Renault Trucks will set off to take on the deserts of sand, stone and salt, passes of up to 3,800m high, stony valleys, muddy and rocky tracks and vast extents of steppe between the two silk capitals, Lyon and Peking, aiming for a June arrival date.

Eight teams of Renault employees will take the controls of the six Renault Kerax and two Renault Sherpa trucks, in what will be an exceptional technical challenge and a unique human adventure.

Covering an incredible 12,500 miles (20,000 kilometres) through Europe, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China, including Mongolia, Silk Road 2005 will be an exciting real-life demonstration and test of the robustness and sheer endurance of the Renault Kerax.  

The expedition will be the first time that Renault trucks have covered such a distance and areas as harsh as the famous Gobi desert and the Taklamakan desert, which means “he who goes in, will not come out”.

Euan Harron, Marketing Director of Renault Trucks UK, said: “It’s really exciting to see Kerax trucks, which are used the length and breadth of Britain, taking on such an exciting, tough challenge.”   

Of note recently, twenty-one Renault Kerax were used as support vehicles on this year’s Dakar Rally. The same vehicles also competed in the T4 category of the two-week Barcelona to Dakar challenge which finished on January 16th.