Automotive

After a mid-week early evening departure from the South of Germany, the route first snaked South towards Garmisch Partenkirchen (the only stretch of autobahn) and then via Imst and Landeck towards the Reschenpass. As it was properly dark here I have no pictures of this leg but let me tell you - if you’ve only driven the Reschenpass during the day, with the regular traffic present, you’re missing out. At night and deserted, in the cold autumn or winter air it’s a lot more magical than the low elevation would make one think. It requires solid brakes if you attempt it properly on the downhill section from Austria to Italy but one can make the engine sing and if the handling is there the road is a great companion - wide enough for articulated lorries, sufficiently twisty to be interesting, and with enough overtaking spots to pass any slower traffic that might find itself out and about (during the day the traffic situation will largely prevent overtaking).

After a light supper in Glurns - the end of the first day’s stage and the start of the Italian road trip proper - it was off to sleep for an early-ish start. 

Glurns is a lovely little town well worth exploring but as I have done that previously and time was of the essence, here just a couple of snowy postcards…

Upon leaving town, you start off on the unspectacular SS38. It was the first road trip where we used a combination of GoogleMaps and ChatGPT for planning, which led to some solid results overall but needed a lot of handholding. A proper ‘glorious driving road app’ would be much appreciated but wasn’t out at the time, so the route selection required frequent checks and fine tuning - which works if there are two people in the car and is harder if one does it alone. 

Instead of following the original plan to go to Bolzano first and then into the mountains, we detoured earlier at Merano already, onto the SS238, which turned out to be a very inspired choice. 

In addition to some ‘unusual for Western Europe’ old school tunnels…

And a couple of nice, sufficiently wide switchbacks (not the very slow variety of Stelvio), we finally hit proper snow that actually stayed on the road and wasn’t melting. 

Going up the Senale pass was great - after passing a stuck truck at the bottom we practically had the pass to ourselves and the AWD could show all it had - successfully. As the speeds on snow are naturally lower, the somewhat imprecise rear axle of the M3 was less of an issue here than during the faster sections on dry tarmac on the subsequent days. 

After that followed a short stretch on the SS43 with some brilliant curves, before the road turned more conventional and we left it for the smaller SS421 - another gem discovered during this road trip and safely saved away for another run during warmer months. 

Here the cloud cover lifted somewhat and you had snowy peaks set off against late autumnal vineyards for contrast. 

In addition you had several stretches of nice switchbacks - the road was a gem throughout and traffic was light in spite of it being a regular weekday. 

No - not the first glimpse of Lago di Garda but a view over the Lago di Molveno. 

Some more foggy sections with avalanche protection over the main road …

Before the final descent towards Lago di Garda started. Many roads have a preferred direction of travel (North to South, West to East…). Here I would say you will likely enjoy it equally in both directions, as uphill and downhill sections follow each other frequently and you do not have a general uphill or general downhill run. 

No Italian roadtrip without seeing at least one Piaggio Ape 🛺🇮🇹

And finally, Limone and Lago di Garda. 

The watch for the day was our P15 and while a Beemer flying low will not match the speeds of the F104 that the CP-2 originally resided in, it was somehow apropos for the trip. 

Final verdict? In the off season months, especially in less than ideal weather (i.e. no motorhomes, no cyclists…) the SS238 and SS421 are truly fantastic roads. There’s constantly something going on and the variety of radii and speeds adds a certain roller coaster rhythm to driving there that IMHO makes up a great driving road. 

In addition the tarmac quality was overall very good, with no potholes to worry about and even if some stretches were not exactly straight, a modern suspension should allow you to focus on enjoying the road rather than carefully threading a line between road imperfections. 

Would you enjoy it in every kind of car? Probably so but a good shove of easily available torque, reasonable front end grip and sufficiently abuse proof brakes will help, irrespective of what the final bhp or power to weight of your chosen vehicle is. 

Hope you enjoyed the second installment, with more to follow in the coming weeks 👋🏻🏁

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