Richard Bremner takes a Ferrari 512M to the Sahara. Why? To get a great drive. The full, original story from CAR magazine 1995
Because it's there!: Driving a Ferrari to the Sahara, CAR magazine, May 1995In 1995, CAR came up with a brilliant wheeze of driving a Ferrari to Africa. It was the first time we had attempted such an adventure with a Ferrari – and we were surprised when Maranello agreed. Richard Bremner is your guide, as we drive an F512M down to the sand dunes of the Sahara. Read the full unabridged story below.
I would take the car from Maranello out of Italy, through France and into Spain, meeting Colin Goodwin and photographer Tim Wren in Malaga. They had driven from London to Malaga in CAR’s long-term-test Vauxhall Omega, which we would use as a back-up car. We would head for Algeciras, and take the ferry to Tangier. What awaited us there we didn’t quite know…
Relax as you surf on that great wave of power, listen to the flat-12 and discover that the seats are surprisingly comfortable, even after a dozen hours. There are just two problems: the spare tyre’s habit of heeling into my lap through right-handers means that I have to steer one-handed through the twists of southern Spain to support it. And, more serious, the engine has a misfire. And we’re nowhere near Morocco.
The road is good but slow and busy. Even in the dark you can see people’s astonishment at the Ferrari as we pass through towns, interest peaking when we’re flagged down by the police. Flashing my schoolboy French I explain what we’re doing to a baffled but friendly policeman, who wishes us ‘bonne route’. And we’re soon to have it.
What does it sound like from outside? ‘A bit disappointing – you can only hear it pushing through the air and the tyre roar. We couldn’t hear the engine at all,’ reports Goodwin. Our route provides an early test of the Ferrari’s off-roading abilities, which seem rather good. It doesn’t ground, and it doesn’t get stuck. Instead, it emerges into a small village dragging a trawl of dust and the stares of amazed onlookers behind it.
How do people react to it? They’re amazed, amused, intrigued. Hardly anyone has heard of Ferrari, except two young blokes on a moped who ask if it’s a Lamborghini Diablo competitor. No-one is hostile, even when a huge crowd, ten deep, gathers around the car while Wren is snapping a cobra on its roof.
I drive with the windows open, the better to hear the exhaust ricochet off the rock face. From outside, this must sound like Armageddon. We stop for snaps near a man selling a particularly uninteresting range of rocks. ‘You’re lucky,’ he says. ‘This road is usually under three metres of snow in January.’ But there’s no snow to be seen.
The drops are spectacular. The drive to M’Hamid is 130 miles and it’s 80 to Zagora, where Mohamed says he now wants to go despite the appearance of several garages. Well before that, we enter the mouth of the Drâa Valley, where we’re greeted by impossibly biblical scenes. The floor of the valley is crowded with date palms, a green carpet binding cliffs the colour of sunset.
There’s no-one about, nothing to hit but the gravel at the road’s edge and the rev limiter. There’s no radar, no police and no stopping. This is how to use a Ferrari. Mohamed says nothing, although he seems wide-eyed and a little tense in the shoulders. The next straight is longer. The engine trumpets its double-bass backbeat as I sink the throttle again and the tacho needle advances relentlessly. Nearly 140mph. The road seems a little narrow for anything more, and in any case, I don’t want Mohamed to think I’m a sadist. He’s already suspiciously silent.
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