   Bucket List Drive: The Alps. Click image to enlarge |
Review and photos by Jonathan Yarkony
Klagenfurt, Austria – I tried to resist. I almost wasn’t going to drive it. I mean, it’s a car we’ll never see here in North America, so I figured, well, we really don’t need to cover it. But then I had my turn behind the wheel of the Audi RS6 Avant and I was changed forever. That was when it all came together. This magical trip, these spectacular cars, these epic roads, this lucky life.
Yes, there is a certain measure of objectivity we must attempt when evaluating and reporting on cars for consumer, but along the way there are some experiences that we cannot fail to appreciate as driving enthusiasts. On pretty much every driving enthusiast’s bucket list is an epic mountain pass, twisting back and forth up and down a steep cut between taller peaks, and quite often, it is one of the multitude of passes criss-crossing the Alps between France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy. Perhaps most famous is the Stelvio Pass of Top Gear fame, but there are literally dozens of them in the Alps, the small twisty roads reflecting the spread of civilization and the need to connect with other communities.
For its 2013 Audi Alpen Tour through the Alps, what Audi like to call the Land of Quattro, Audi event planners designed a route emanating from Klagenfurt, Austria through various Alpen passes in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, into France, down to Monaco, and then returning along the same route. Each direction was broken into three legs, with a different group of international media for each leg for a total of six waves. A small group of Canadian Media was invited to complete the last leg, joining up with the travelling circus at Innsbruck, Austria and bringing the convoy home to Klagenfurt with an overnight stop in Kitzbuhel.
The first day started with the RS5 Cabriolet, immediately climbing a road up steep switchback turns just minutes out of our hotel, this one not even a highlighted pass on our route. I eventually took the wheel in a small town in mid-morning, dropped the top, cruised along some rural highways and drove Brenner Pass before pulling in for our lunch stop in the Italian side of the border. Brenner Pass is not a steep climb of tight switchbacks up a mountainside, but rather a flat, sinuous stretch around Brenner Lake and then a ribbon of elevated roads and tunnels carving between the mountains looming around us. It was a faster and smoother pass than we expected and was over just as I managed to find a stretch free of traffic.
After lunch my driving partner and I set out with another pair of journos, a convoy of one matte grey 2014 Audi RS7 and a mint 1988 Audi Quattro Coupe. We quickly climbed the Valparola Pass and descended the Falzarego Pass (Passo di Falzarego to locals, tight switchback roads through the rocky Dolomites leading into Cortina d’Ampezzo, a ski-resort town and host of the 1956 Winter Olympics. It went by in a blur. I think I saw the ski jumping hill. Exciting, I know.
  Bucket List Drive: The Alps. Click image to enlarge |
But we weren’t here for the scenery, we were here for the roads and the cars. I took the wheel some time after we crossed back into Austria, where we traversed the Grossglockner High Alpine Road. Epic.
You have to pay to drive this road and understandably so. Yes, I’m sure it goes to maintenance of the tunnels and roads, which are in excellent shape, many of them elevated, with some sections even retaining the paving stones dating back to the modern road built almost 100 years ago. Archaeological findings show that the pass was in use as early as 5,000 years ago. According to the route book, the road has 36 hairpins, climbs 1,500 m, its highest point at 2,506 m and runs through the Hohe Tauern National Park, yet it is wide and smoothly paved in most areas. It also offers a magnificent view of Austria’s highest peak, Grossglockner, after which the road is named.
