Shackleton’s Grandson drives a Hyundai across the South Pole

Hyundai makes a legendary (and dead) British explorer's dream come true. Automologist MAC tells us how.

British school boys of my generation were raised with stories of great British explorers who defied all odds to bravely go where no man had gone before. Up there was Ernest Shackleton, who was one of the great Antarctic Explorers, although most of what he did ended in failure. But at least he was a heroic failure.

Now, his great grandson, Patrick Bergal, has managed to achieve one of the things that Ernest couldn’t do and that is to cross the Antarctic from one ocean to the other. To do this, he teamed up with Hyundai, who supplied him a slightly modified Santa Fe sport for the job. The somewhat wicked looking soft-roader was fitted with a higher ground clearance suspension, big balloon tyres and a 65 gallon fuel tank with fuel heater. But other than that, it was essentially a standard passenger car.

For those of you not in the know, this year is the 100th anniversary of the failed attempt by Ernest Shackleton to cross the Antarctic. Of course, being airdropped into the Antarctic and supported by a massive crew probably made the trip way easier than the one attempted by his grandfather, but hats off to Patrick Bergal and the Hyundai crew for honouring the memory. Take a look at the promo video...