One week after Willys revealed its General Purpose vehicle, and in the midst of The Blitz, journalist Sullivan Richardson, mechanic Arnold Whitaker, and Kenneth C. Van Hee drove quietly out of Detroit in a 1941 Plymouth sedan bound for Cape Horn, Tierra del Fuego. It was just before midnight on November 18, 1940, and as they cruised into the night, the men recalled the advice they were given from diplomatic representatives throughout Central and South America. “In friendly, but pointed terms,” Richardson wrote in Adventure South, “they suggested we call the whole thing off.”
The Richardson Pan-American Highway Expedition marked the first successful attempt to drive an automobile from the United States to the tip of South America. In reality, the expedition’s name reflected what the world’s longest motorable road would become rather than what it was because, in 1940, the Pan-American Highway didn’t yet exist.
The trip was a self-imposed reporting assignment for Richardson, who would write newspaper stories and capture motion picture films along the way. The four-door sedan was outfitted with a 35-gallon gas tank built into the trunk and topped out at 5,630 pounds fully loaded. From the Mexican border at Nogales to the Panama Canal, roads ranged from dry weather trails built for high-wheeled carts, paved highways, and tortuous burro tracks requiring a team of men (and sometimes bull and tackle) to continue. In some areas, such as in southern Costa Rica, there was no road at all.
South of Oaxaca, with the help of the local people, it took the team 25 days to cover 50 miles. On some days, they made less than a mile’s progress. The men dined on tortillas and tinned sardines and cut pieces of sweet panela for snacking and to dissolve in hot cocoa. By the time they reached El Salvador, the car was in disastrous shape but still running, the all-weathered gravel highway through 75 percent of the country providing a sweet respite before the dust, inconceivable ruts, and steep grades through Honduras and Nicaragua.
After a recce by plane over Costa Rica’s El General Valley revealed dense vegetation, and with the rainy season on the way, the men deemed the area impossible to drive through without more time and a larger team. With the help of the United Fruit Company, the Plymouth was loaded onto a platform car and sent from the banana launch at Palo Seco to Golfito, Panama. By the time the men arrived at the Panama Canal, christening the vehicle with a bucketful of Pacific Atlantic water, they had completed what is now known as the Inter-American Highway, with sights set on South America.
Read more: The Drums of Tonkin: Frank and Helen Shreider’s Indonesian Expedition by Amphibious Jeep
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