Driving around Australia in any car is no easy task, even more so if you’re travelling in a 100 year old Citroen.
Though we had the luxury of using the 2023 Drive Car of the Year winner in the EV9 on our lap around Australia, the team at Incredible Journey – a non-proift religious organisation – is looking to recreate the legendary adventure of Nevill Westwood and Greg Davies, down to the car.
Using a 1923 Citroen 5CV known as ‘Bubsie’ as their workhorse, Westwood and Davies did the unthinkable by becoming the first drivers to successfully circumnavigate Australia in 1925.
According to the National Museum of Australia, the pair took five months to complete the round trip, and in that time the two Australian travelled 14,000kms before successfully circumnavigating the entire country.
Westwood and Davies started from Perth to the Northern Territory, passing Brisbane and Sydney before taking the Nullarbor Plains back to Western Australia.
To celebrate the Western Australians incredible cross country trek, Incredible Journey is looking to retrace the pair's historic route.
While ‘Bubsie’ has been immortalised and permanently retired at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, event organisers for ‘Right Around Australia’ has restored a different 1923 Citroen 5CV.
The event started on June 9, 2025 at Landsdale Christian College – the sister school of Carmel Adventist College where Westwood originally attended – with event organisers planning routine stops at various states and territories until the end of January 2026.
Warren May, an Incredible Journey team member who worked on the replica vehicle, said the donor vehicle was sourced by other car enthusiasts in Maitland, New South Wales. However, restoring a historically accurate century-old car isn’t easy.
“The original [replica] car started as a coupé, but the original [Bubsie] car was called a boat tail, so to replicate [Bubsie], the back had to be cut out and a boat tail had to be replicated to fit, so that was the biggest part of the restoration,” May told Drive.
While May said the team “were very fortunate” they had enough parts to build the project car, they faced a few roadblocks during the 800 plus hour restoration process.
“One of our biggest issues was getting [historically accurate] tyres, but [Melbourne-based] Antique Tyres was very helpful in locating tyres... but it did take a few months to get them,” he explained.
“The gearbox and clutch were also one of our biggest hassles… we’d put the gearbox in, and the thing would shudder, and we’d have to readjust the spring tensions. We found that the gearbox shaft, the bearing had worn on the aluminium housing, so we had to rectify that.
“We had the gearbox and clutch out about five times before we were confident, we had it right,” May told Drive.
Besides various mechanical challenges, he said the replica vehicle “had a lot of body panels that were missing... a lot of the panels had to be remade because of rust… we had to fabricate them.”
It’s hard to fathom driving a five-horsepower car around Australia in 1925, where road infrastructure was in their infancy.
But in 2025, May said 100-year-old Citroen 5CV would be deemed more of a safety hazard, hence why event organisers are towing the replica car to various locations.
“Our project started as a thought ‘, Well, can they drive it around Australia?’ But because of the speed and age of the car, from a safety point of view, we deemed it unsafe because if you’ve got a four-trailer road train coming up behind you, we didn’t like that idea,” he said.
Additionally, some parts of the car like the windscreen wipers are manually operated, meaning if it’s a rainy day, May said “you have to manoeuvre the windscreen wiper by hand, you have to change the gears, you have to steer the car so at one stage you’ve got no hands on the steering wheel”.
While the car is fully registered and can be driven on local roads legally, it doesn’t fit the requirements of travelling on highways, which are needed to replicate Nevill Westwood’s original journey.
May stated, “there’s some indication” that some guys can reach 60km/h; however, the team determined “that around 45km/h is a comfortable speed”.
When asked what prompted May and his mates to recreate the original journey, he said it was Westwood's humanitarian mission following his conversion to Christianity that inspired them.
“Neville Westwood became a Christian when he was 18 years old, and he wanted to do something in his Christian life, so he set out to try and visit people and try to bring hope and help to people,” he told Drive.
According to May, Westwood was known for his philanthropy and focus on community, travelling through remote areas using a range of mobility tools like push bikes and motorbikes in his early life.
“The passion that he had for helping others is what drove me and my mates to say, ‘hey we’re not only living a piece of Australian motoring history, but we’re also living a piece of human history where a Western Australian guy wanted to help his fellow man’,” he explained.
“That’s why we’re telling the story to as many people as we can, so that if you help others and your kind to others, it pays off.”
Though the automotive industry has evolved at light speed in a 100 years, at its core, Incredible Journey's Right Around Australia event aims to rekindle the kindness and mateship Australians are known for.
“The most important thing [about this event] is the reason why he [Nevill Westwood] did it. He didn't set out to be a hero in the motoring industry, he set out to help people [and] he apparently lived that his whole life,” May told Drive.
“For me, that's where it comes to, it's the passion for helping others. For me, it's a buzz because I can catch up with car clubs all around Australia. The networks of names and friends that we've created is amazing.
“I could speak for the rest of the team members that they've got contact numbers in their phone now [that they didn't have prior], people that want to visit and come back and see where we live and we do as well. It's been an absolutely incredible journey.”
While you can see the Citroen 5CV at various stops along the eight month journey, it's worth noting the French car maker bid au revoir to Australia's new car market in late 2024.
Prior to its exit in Australia, Citroen was the longest-running automotive brand in the country, accruing over 100 years of history in Australia before sales were permanently paused amid declining demand.
Interestingly, it was the 5CV convertible that was the French marque's first model in the land down under, with Citroen introducing the grand tourer to the local market in 1923.
Ethan Cardinal graduated with a Journalism degree in 2020 from La Trobe University and has been working in the fashion industry as a freelance writer prior to joining Drive in 2023. Ethan greatly enjoys investigating and reporting on the cross sections between automotive, lifestyle and culture. Ethan relishes the opportunity to explore how deep cars are intertwined within different industries and how they could affect both casual readers and car enthusiasts.
