My take on a legendary drive is that it consists of one of three key elements, a memorable occasion, a cracking road or an amazing car. Combine two or more of those elements and you are in driving Nirvana…
There are certain drives that stay locked in the memory banks for a long time. I drive nearly every day, but for a trip to lodge itself in my long-term storage facilities it has to be built on at least one of the three pillars used to build driving nirvana. The first pillar is occasion; a lot of my favourite drives are connected to life-changing moments and events. I’ll never forget my first solo drive after passing my test, driving off on my honeymoon with a new, shiny wife or bringing my first-born child home in car. These drives could have been done in the most bland, boring, anaemic hatchback and they still would have etched themselves into my memory due to the rush of emotions and sense of pure joy at the time.
The second pillar supporting legendary drives is the road; unless you live in the Isle of Man countryside it’s unlikely that your daily commute in the rush hour offers the opportunity to explore great driving roads on a regular basis. Perhaps that’s why holidays often hold special driving memories for me, experiencing new and unexpectedly awesome roads that offer a new and challenging driving sensation. The perfect road allows you to push a car, demonstrate your flawless driving technique (?) and generate a long-lasting sense of satisfaction that’s sure to stay in the memory. It doesn’t need to be a special day or even a special car (but both would be nice), if you stumble across an awesome new piece of tarmac it’s highly likely that the drive will stick around in the memory.
The final, and most obvious pillar to go with a memorable occasion and a great road is of course, an amazing car. The raw sensation of driving something with a great engine, tactile controls and some sweet handling sometimes is enough on it’s own to warrant a registry in the your greatest drives of all time. The first time I ever drove a Porsche on a dark wet crawl out of London in rush hour still sticks in the memory, even if it was a busy A13 and a non-descript Thursday evening.
Should you be able to combine one or more of the three pillars into a drive, then you really are reaching into the upper echelons of driving nirvana. In no particular order, here are a selection of my own favourite drives that sprung to the front of my memory.
TVR Tuscan to Norfolk in February:
There used to be a Classic Car Club based in Shoreditch that I was a member of for a few years. They had a silver Tuscan that for some reason I thought would be the perfect transport to a friend’s wedding in Norwich. In February. The temperature didn’t get above zero all weekend. We had to get to Norwich cathedral dressed in our finery for the service before dropping the car at a rented house and heading to the reception. The Tuscan had an incredible engine, terrible ventilation and fairly alarming pitch and dive handling characteristics under acceleration and braking on the country roads. The summer tyres were a total disaster in the cold, resulting in an enormous (and unintentional) power slide around the A47 roundabout. The slide was so large and extensive that it earned me a thumbs up and round of applause from the two blokes following me a Mondeo, this was very much not the reaction of my wife.
The crowning glory of the TVR experience was the handbrake sticking on at the traffic lights at the top of a steep hill just near the cathedral. Holding up the Norwich shopping traffic for two cycles of the lights resulted in me taking desperate measures to get going again. My wife held the wheel while I used both arms to yank on the handbrake with all my might and attempt a hill start at the same time. The resultant burn out was heard by all of the wedding guests already seated inside the cathedral I later found out. What a bonkers machine that was, amazingly it started after sitting outside all night at minus five degrees.
Peugeot 206 to the Isle of Skye:
Another favourite trip down memory lane is a certainly a road and occasion event rather than the car being the star. Due to expired VANOS on my BMW M3, we had taken my wife’s Peugeot 206 GSi up to Scotland on a trip to tour the Western Isles. We were running late for a dinner reservation on the Isle of Skye and had to make rapid progress along the Kyle of Localsh road to get over the bridge and to the hotel before the kitchen closed. The sun was setting in front of us as we made solid progress along the road, a beautiful flowing bit of tarmac that stretches on for miles with open bends and stunning scenery on either side.
On a straight section we were caught by a squad of Dutch guys on Harleys. They had some good game, plenty fast on the straights, but the Peugeot had way more grip through the corners. We played cat and mouse down the road for several miles, watching the mirror, watching the road, stoking the weedy engine and ripping it through the bends. Somehow there was no traffic whatsoever, and we stayed in this unlikely convoy for mile after mile. Just before the bridge to Skye the biker gang peeled off and we shared a cheery wave and bip of horns. Mutual respect built over some of the best driving miles I’ve enjoyed in the UK. I bet that road is covered in cameras these days, sigh.
Jeep Grand Cherokee Essex Green Lanes:
When we were building an extension to our house I had the opportunity to embrace bangernomics and buy a vehicle that would be ideal for runs to the tip and the DIY sheds. The chosen option was a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee, the lowly 4.0 straight six model rather than the V8 wonder womper, but still an American beauty. We quickly grew to love it, sumptuous leather interior, tons of space in the back and a lazy-smooth auto gearbox. We parked it on the rubble on our driveway and began to use it on all sorts of outdoor adventures.
My favourite excursion was a summer evening with two good friends, trying our hand at some green laning in the Essex countryside. OS map in hand, we had great fun zooming round the back lanes, metering out pace notes and attempting to find tiny tracks hidden behind farm buildings and hedges. We were soon trundling along ancient lanes in stunning countryside, completely on our own and looking at each other saying ‘this feels like it shouldn’t be allowed’ – it was so much fun. For complete off-road novices it was a total joy – the fun of the navigation, the jeopardy of getting stuck with no proper equipment and the novelty of bouncing through the ruts all made for some superb fun.
To top it all, when we found a ford across one of the back roads, the Jeep managed to funnel a torrent of water over the bonnet, through the open sunroof and directly onto my friend Jon in the rear seat. Perfect! It’s been a load of fun to revisit these drives and write about them, definitely a topic I’ll come back to.
There is of course the fun ritual of a Sunday morning drive just for the sake of it, I’ve made a short video on why only petrolheads understand this concept on the Autobunker YouTube channel.
I’d love to hear about what makes a memorable drive for you, and even better to get some details of those drives so I can perhaps one day experience them myself one day. Drop me a note and we can make a plan to share them with the Autobunker community.
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