Former Top Gear host and a participant of The Grand Tour show Richard Hammond has revealed that he would never again see the Morgan AeroMax, one of his most beloved automotive classics, as it is going six feet under.
Hammond loved his AeroMax, but disputes in the family forced him to sell it to a dealership, which later shipped it to a customer in Australia. He had hoped to be able to buy it back after a while, but its current owner wrote to him explaining that it would now be impossible.
Apparently, the car will be buried along with its owner, who grew way too attached to it over these years. As it turns out now, Gloucestershire Live reported about this decision last summer, even mentioning the owner by his name: Philip Allen. Allen devised a burial ceremony worth over £200,000 for his passing: his body is to be dressed in a crocodile leather jacket and sat behind the steering wheel. The car is to be sealed in an airtight container and buried under a concrete slab.
Allen had, too, dreamt about driving an AeroMax, but never managed to obtain it in 2008 when it was still in production. Only 100 units were made, including 28 right-hand-drive ones, and all turned out to be reserved in pre-paid custom orders.
Allen wound up spending years looking for a used AeroMax, so that nearly all dealerships in the UK ended up knowing him and his plight. He could barely believe his luck when Chris Vermeulen, a motorcycle racing driver from Australia, sold him his example that he indirectly received from Hammond.