Bill Fink slips behind the wheel of a powerful supercar for a heart-thumping foray through the Bavarian Alps.
It feels like a true-life James Bond moment. I’m standing on the balcony of the fortress-like Schloss Elmau resort, high in the Bavarian Alps, looking down upon two dazzling supercars parked below me on the cobblestone driveway. The cars, an Audi R8 and an Aston Martin Vantage, rumble with barely restrained power as they are being prepped by a mechanic.
The two convertibles seem ready for me to leap from the balcony to make a quick getaway from whatever supervillain is using this mountaintop retreat as a lair. The road beyond disappears into forested hills leading to snow-peaked mountains. The mechanic waves for me to come. Adventure awaits.
I’m on the first day of a trip with Ultimate Driving Tours, a company that develops and leads supercar tours on curated routes throughout Europe. The tours consist of guests driving in convoys of late-model supercars, including Ferraris, Porches and Lamborghinis, on itineraries highlighting the best of each region’s roadways, scenery and amenities, including luxury hotels and gourmet meals. The tours span France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy.
The planned route for my trip includes small villages, tourist spots, winding hilly roads, and some excursions on the “unrestricted” no-speed-limit straightaways of the German autobahn. My trip leader Anthony Moss explains the rules for the route in a pre-trip briefing. He emphasizes that this is supposed to be a fun adventure, but it’s not a race—we are to obey local laws about speed and responsibility. However, I’m soon to discover that there will be almost more speed than I can handle.
Driving from the resort, my trip begins by piloting the Aston Martin, top-down, cruising along a forest road, enjoying the blue skies, soft breezes, and dazzling colours of the fall foliage that surrounds me. While the car could be driven manually, the automatic transmission is engaged, making it easy for a non-experienced supercar driver like myself to focus on the overall experience rather than stress about redlining RPMs.
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The Aston Martin’s ride is exceptionally smooth, soft leather seat cocooning me in a surprisingly spacious interior for a performance car. Unlike, say, a Lamborghini, I feel elevated from the road, giving me a good vantage point and a more conventional driving experience.
As my car rumbles and roars through small German villages, I can feel the eyes of pedestrians and fellow drivers upon me. Did they think I was a super spy on reconnaissance? Or maybe an eccentric billionaire out to buy some Bavarian soft pretzels?
When our group parks at the lot of the famous Neuschwanstein “Disney Castle”, our cars usurp the regular tourist attraction. A group of Chinese tourists come by and ask if they could pose by our cars for some Instagram-worthy photos. “Don’t scratch the paint, I spent a lot of money on this car,” I warn, with a wink.
Next stop, the famed German autobahn. Now in the Audi R8, I feel the V-10 602-horsepower engine roar as our little convoy easily passes 160, 170, then 180 kph in light traffic that quickly cedes the left lane. As the speedometer tops 200 kph the car seemed eager for more, but I hesitate. Our trip leader, an experienced rally car racer, continues to accelerate. As I top 205kph I don’t feel I have the time for another glance at the speedometer, my eyes unblinkingly on the road and the traffic I’m racing past. The car handles well, but my nerves are shot.
From nerves to joy, we leave the highway to vroom through the twists and turns of Bavarian mountain roads, my Audi gripping the road like it’s on rails. It’s sheer fun, almost video-game action as I rip through turns and gun it on the straightaways. The two-way radio in my passenger seat barks out instructions from my trip leader (or was it James Bond’s “M”?) telling me when it’s safe to pass on the blind turns.
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After a full day of driving, we return to the Schloss Elmau. The secluded mountaintop resort hosted the G8 World Summits with leaders including Barak Obama and Germany’s Angela Merkel. During the summit, the hotel was guarded like a Bond villain’s hideout, according to Dietmar Mueller-Elmau, the hotel’s third-generation family owner. “About 10,000 NATO troops were stationed in these woods and mountains around us. Not even a squirrel could have gotten past them,” he tells me.
Needless to say, I feel pretty secure there. While the resort’s archery range and steep mountain trails evoke Bond-like adventures, the hotel’s luxurious spa, relaxing libraries and plush theatre seem a perfect setting to meet a Bond girl or secret spy contact. Although neither appears, I do enjoy dinner conversations with my fellow tour drivers as we share our favourite car stories from the road and plan our next day’s escape.
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