The life of a car enthusiast usually has a known stopping point. There will likely come a time when you have to hang up your keys. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, as aging is just the human condition! We all have the same destination in the end. However, the journeys you have before you reach that destination can make it worthwhile. What driving adventures do you hope to experience before it’s time to stop driving?
Pete asked this question in the Autopian Slack channel, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. I’m at the age where my older sibling and my older friends all have teenagers. Surprisingly, not a single one of them is even remotely interested in driving a car. Only one of them has a driver’s license and he has it purely to get to work and back. What will car enthusiasm look like a couple of generations from now? Do the kids of today dream of wild driving adventures?
I can’t speak for them, but I want to believe my own adventures are only heating up. I’ve mentioned it before, but I look up to Sabine Schmitz as a hero. She was a Nürburgring maven and made going fast look so fun. Schmitz clearly had a ton of fun doing what she loved, too. One day, I want to take a Smart Fortwo on the Nürburgring and see if I could get anywhere near the kinds of lap times she got in a Ford Transit. I’m aware that I’m going to be nowhere near as fast as her and public laps aren’t the full track, but that’s not stopping me.
From there, I have a bunch of different ideas. I’d love to see if I could make a Smart drive around the world like last week’s overland Fiat Multipla. I’d also love to explore Vietnam by motorcycle, experience the unrestricted parts of the German Autobahn, and swing a leg over one of those MTT Turbine motorcycles. I still have parts of America I need to see like the Canadian and Alaskan wilderness, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the tip of Michigan’s “mitt.” Sadly, the Blue Ridge Parkway took a hit during Helene.
Those are just the adventures on the ground. I’d love to fly to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh one year and I’d melt if I somehow found myself at the controls of a jet for even just 30 minutes. There’s also a whole world of watercraft out there that I’ve only just barely touched.
We asked other Autopian writers and got a few other answers.
Rivers: Stelvio Pass – On a bicycle and then in a car.
The Bishop: replicate the movie Rendezvous, but traffic in Paris is so much worse than in 1976 I bet it’s not possible even at 5am on Sunday.
Pete: I’d really like to get through MSF training next summer and put a motorcycle in the garage, and a proper racing school experience is definitely on the bucket list.
Those sound like a blast! Ah, okay, maybe not getting stuck in Parisian traffic. How about you? What’s on your driving bucket list before your grandkids take your keys?
(Topshot: Auto Addiction on YouTube)
Race the La Carrera PanAmericana in an American classic, say, Lincoln Capri or a shoebox Chevy. Modified, of course.
I lost my keys and my Cadillac CT6 3.0 litre Twin turbo to the kids 6 months ago and it’s driving me fu**ing crazy! Best part is dear old dad is still on the hook for payments and insurance because they can’t afford a luxury car. Please no advice!
I would love to go around the ‘Ring in my 1967 Delta 88. I know the stock drum brakes would probably really suck,but still.
Driving the Nurburgring in anything, and I can make this one happen surprisingly easily, so I’m going to short-list that. Would love to do it in my 911, or any air-cooled 911, but absent shipping mine to Europe that’s not happening, which is another way of saying it’s not happening.
Driving the Stelvio Pass, and also cycling the Stelvio Pass (just like Rivers). I actually like climbing more than descending so I sort of get off on this kind of thing. I’d probably remember the bike ride more. Make that definitely.
25 years of my Great Mistake, I finally drove most of the PCH/101 last summer. The bit between Big Sur and Santa Barbara remains.
And the one that has been around for a decade – take my 911 on a big trip to the west coast and back – Chicago across the plains and Montana to Bellingham, WA; then down the pacific coast with some detours inland until I get to LA; across the desert through AZ, NM and UT to Denver, then home.
I definitely want to do all of Route 66
I would like to take a few laps around Laguna Seca. Think slow car fast.
The Menton of the Stelvio Pass made me remember that you won’t be far from the Turini Pass when you’re in Southern France… Maybe that’s part of the program.
Nordschliefe in a Lotus.
Oh… and a solo Cannonball Run. In a Lotus.
I want to drive up the Pacific Coast in a convertible. I also want to race on a track. I think doing a ChampCar or 24 hours of Lemons race would be a hoot.
I’d love to do a Land’s End to John O’Groats road trip, taking as many B roads as possible, and hitting as many sites as I can. Preferably in a well sorted MGB or Spitfire.
I have been doing endurance road racing since 2009. Raced on some epic tracks, Watkins Glenn, VIR, Indy and am currently running a Porsche 944 S2. Twenty years ago I would have never imagined I would be doing competitive door to door racing. I figured track days was the be all end all for me. SCCA seemed like a hurdle too high. Thankfully Champcar came along and opened that door for me. I also completed Hot Rod’s Drag Week this year.
My bucket listed included being able to drive our performance enhanced 2020 Transit Connect around a national racetrack. But sadly, nearly all of those tracks I’ve contacted on the east coast have banned our van from being able to participate. So what I need is for Autopian to host an event at a rented track and allow me to drive my van around the track for a few laps. Here’s what was done and soon to be done to our van: https://passionford.com/forum/restorations-rebuilds-and-projects/503230-we-installed-7k-worth-of-performance-parts-on-a-2020-transit-connect-pictorial.html
Nurburgring, of course. There are trackday groups that run Spa as well, I just have to figure out how to get my truck, trailer and car over there, because it makes the most sense to do them in one trip and I’ll want to do it with the car I’ve always used.
I’ve wanted to drive to the Arctic Ocean since I was a teen, there are two ways to do it, one is to go to Tuktoyaktuk, NT and the other is to Prudhoe Bay, AK via the Dalton Highway. Of course you can’t actually get to the Arctic yourself in Prudhoe Bay due to the oil fields, but an official tour will take you to the shore once you’re in town.
But a new dream I’ve made is to incorporate the trip to Prudhoe Bay into a sort of four-points U.S./Canada trip that would take in St. John’s, Key West, Prudhoe Bay and Unalaska (which you can actually get to by car via a series of ferries). This is a highly impractical, expensive trip that would take about a month but that’s exactly why I want to do it.
For some reason I’m also obsessed with driving the Trans-Saharan Highway which I know it incredibly dangerous, but that’s what spending hours on Google Maps does to me.
There’s tons of great roads just here in the U.S. though. I’ve done the PCH from L.A. to Oregon, took me two days which is probably faster than most people’s comfort, but if you’re considering it at all I say hell yes do it. I also want to do the full circle around Maui, I’ve done parts of it but want to go back to finish the deal.
I have a list!
The most basic is just to make a trip to do the Pacific Coast Highway. Yes I know it’s usually crowed but to this Midwesterner cruising the coast sounds great.
I also want to take a Top Gear style road trip with my friends. We each buy cheap shit boxes and limp them a very long way. Maybe with a challenge or two thrown in.
I’d like to run the Baja 1000. No idea why just sounds fun and there’s no qualifier for it. Just pay the entry fee and show up. Obviously there’s much more than that, but I’ll figure that out later.
Last on my list I’d like to set a land speed record. The idea is to find some obscure category to set it in so I not going g all that fast but can still claim a record.
Were on our way to Asheville from NJ by way of Charlottesville then the Blue Ridge Pkwy. Helene intervened so the BRP is on my list.
You’ve mentioned a couple I’ve always had on my list:
– a few laps of the Nurburgring. I’m not even particularly fussed what car it would be in, probably something fun but slow so I can’t get myself in too much trouble – an MX-5 would probably do the trick
– Hit the unrestricted section of the Autobahn. I actually got very close to doing this a few years ago on a work trip but one of the higher-ups got antsy about it after a fellow Aussie had a prang so I wasn’t allowed. Though I did get to sit in the passenger seat while our German colleague drove us in… of all things… an Opel Insignia (which was rebadged down under as the final generation Holden Commodore).
Other ones:
– Drive across the Nullarbor. 1256km of nothing but the horizon. Sultans Of Swing by Dire Straits on the stereo. The perfect car for this would be an Aussie classic – too bad dad sold the Monaro! I wouldn’t mind doing this in our Ford Territory actually, it’s a big comfy cruiser – and one of the last Aussie-made and designed cars from the Blue Oval.
– A couple of high speed laps of Mount Panorama (where they hold the Bathurst 1000 every year). I’ve actually been on this track in the back of a LandCruiser when I was a kid and couldn’t get over how steep and twisty it is for a racetrack. I’d love to take it at actual race speeds – again probably my weapon of choice would be an MX-5.
Ones I’ve actually done:
– Pacific Coast Hwy from LA to SF in a Dodge Challenger. It was a rental-spec V6 but who cares, it still looked the part! Also drove out to Yosemite, then Death Valley, then the Grand Canyon and Vegas on the same trip. Absolutely fantastic, I couldn’t believe how much the scenery varied. I enjoyed it so much I took a bunch of friends on a similar route a year later in a 30ft motorhome.
– The Pali Highway in Hawaii. Did this several times in several rental cars, from a Mustang Convertible to a Fiat 500. But the highlights were the BMW Z4m and a Dodge Charger Superbee with a ridiculous exhaust – the sound in the tunnels! Couple that with spectacular scenery and perfect weather. I still describe Hawaii as one of my all-time favourite places in the world.
– Western Australia from Perth to Exmouth in a Toyota LandCruiser 70-series pop-top camper. Included driving through the red desert of Francois Peron on sandy tracks and salt pans that suddenly ended with overlooks of brilliantly turquoise shark-infested waters.
There’s a few others, especially local ones like the Great Ocean Road and Wilson’s Prom, as well as big trips along the Far North Queensland coast and through Andalucia in Spain that I’ll always cherish, but I feel this post is getting a bit long.
Great topic, a real trip down memory lane (or highway) for me. Thanks!
Learn to hotwire a car. That’ll show the hypothetical little bastards.
I have been working towards an epic out west trip for awhile. While there’s many places I want to see, much of the idea is about meandering along, then seeing a sign for a little museum—or the world’s largest pile of feed sacks. To dive down the backroads, and stop at the closed service station with a couple of beat-down oval racers out back.
I’d love to drive a DS around the block.
A pleasant drive in a car that’s plenty quick, doesn’t even shift any tedious gears, and saves me gas all the while. Good thing that’s possible, and already done by thousands of people every day, with the Jatco Xtronic CVT!
While I do question the subject of your enthusiasm, I certainly admire the depth of it and your persistent advocacy. 😉