A few years ago, my friends and I were driving up a mountain road on our way to a small cottage we’d rented for NYE celebration. We were using a 4WD Honda CR-V and we eventually ended up stuck on a particularly steep hill. As we were ripping our fingernails trying to fit snow chains, … More Audi RS4 review: this would be the ultimate Santa’s sleigh
Death Valley is best defined by what’s missing. A desert where nothing happens and nothing lives. The list of things that aren’t here is a saga. There’s no vegetation, just cacti and weeds here and there under a perennial patina of dust and matte blue sky, usually empty of clouds. There’s no rain and there … More Ford Mustang review : an all-American road trip in the hottest desert on Earth
I started writing about cars ten years ago and I’ve done the whole thing. The endless stream of cheesy metaphors, thesaurus synonyms and epitomes. The internet is awash with blogs and car mags and I never had any ambition to become the best or anything like that. I just wanted to be on board. … More Driving the phenomenal Lexus LFA around Monaco
The old SLS AMG was mad. It was powered by a 6.2-litre naturally aspirated V8, putting out 571 hp and it weighed, when all is said and done, about a million tons. In theory, the SLS would do zero-to-sixty in 3.7 seconds but the truth is you’d never get to sixty, because you’d be facing … More Driving the Mercedes AMG GT-C down a cypress-lined Tuscan road
This is Lake Baikal, in Southern Siberia, Russia and it is the largest freshwater lake in the world. Driving on a frozen lake is a unique, unreal experience and the best thing about it is you don’t even need a lot of power to have fun because lack of traction is enormously entertaining on its … More Ice-skating in Siberia w/ a Lexus LC and RX
Driving, or riding, this thing is a bit like arm-wrestling a medium size dog. It hasn’t got wheels, obviously, it has a singular girdle, or chain, for motion and two side blades (or whatever they’re called) at the front for steering. This thing is built for use in extreme conditions like hard snow or ice, … More Riding Across Lapland at -30°
The name is Salone Auto Torino del Parco Valentino, which is Italian for “Turin Car Show at the Parco Valentino”, but everybody calls it “Valentino”. It is named after the public park in central Turin in which it is held, it’s open to the public, it’s completely free and, this is what you want to … More Parco Valentino: on the Verge of Becoming the World’s Biggest Car Show
I was fortunate enough to visit Lapland twice and I’ve learnt a few things. In Mediterranean Europe, which is where I live, we have countryside and promenades, we have sinuous coastal roads and paths through the woods. We have city centres, congested and complex, and we have the open road. Think of empty country roads … More Learning How to Drift: 4th gen Golf on Nokian Tyres
Finnish is impossible. In theory it has two distant relatives, Estonian and Hungarian, but in reality these three languages are different and complicated. Finnish is an agglutinated language (meaning that words are modified with suffixes depending on the role of the word in the sentence) and it has an unusual sing-song rhythm when spoken, which … More Reviewed: Audi RS5 on Nokian Tyres in Lapland, Finland
Per il genere umano, il progresso è sempre stato illogico e caotico, e per niente spalmato nel tempo. Abbiamo tecnologie che non sono cambiate negli ultimi centomila anni e altre che sono già vecchie rispetto a ieri. Esempio a caso? Più o meno un milione e mezzo di anni fa, un nostro lontano avo inventò … More Reviewed: Eclipse Cross sulle Alpi
_Flabbergasted LF 