Video: TG’s Chilean road trip

There were llamas. There were flamingos. There was desert. There were many, many murderous trucks.

Yes, in the February issue of Top Gear magazine - out now in print and digital form - we've undertaken another grand TG road trip, piloting a five-door Mini Cooper S from the Chilean capital Santiago to the Peruvian border, 1600 miles across the Atacama Desert.

The Atacama is very big, very empty and very, very dry. Parts haven't seen rain for half a millennium. Four-mile-high volcanoes loom over arid salt pans, the nearest petrol station might be a few hundred miles distant. It isn't, in short, the sort of place you want to break down.

What were we doing out there? On a vital consumer mission, naturally: to hunt down one of the rarest old Minis on the planet, a strange little slice in the history of British car-building in the wild Chilean desert.

To find out exactly what we're talking about, and whether we succeeded in our strange mission, you'll need to buy/download the new issue of Top Gear magazine. But to whet your appetite, have a watch of the video of our trip...