Driving the Suzuki Kizashi from Japan to LA

Twitter pointed me to a 2010 Motor Trend story about a couple of relatively stock Kizashis that drove, with factory support, from Japan to Russia to Alaska to Los Angeles. Traveling the Kolyma Highway from Yakutsk to Magadan is on the top of my travel bucket list right now, and after reading the tale, I'm convinced that it's really not that hard to do. The challenges:

• Bad drivers
• Unsafe cars and trucks on the road
• Poor dirt roads
• Poor paved roads
• Isolation
• Lack of service
• Cold weather (Susuman is the coldest town on the planet in the winter)
• Fording rivers (probably just one or two rivers in the summer)

Other than the rivers part, it's not particularly worse than parts of the Pan-American Highway. If I ride in a Land Cruiser with an experienced crew equipped with a satellite phone, I should be fine.

Here is the Motor Trend story, with 275(!) photos.

And here is Motorweek's review of the rare car.