Ferrari to the Sahara
FERRARI TO THE SAHARA : PART 2
Inspired by a CAR adventure drive nearly 30 years ago, we’re driving a Ferrari to the Sahara desert – 3.5 million square miles of eerie, beautiful emptiness. But first, the Atlas mountains…
National Route 9, an awe-inspiring mountain road wrought from an old caravan trail by the French military, is so narratively perfect it’s as though this place were created not by time and pressure but by ascriptwriter. For travellers heading south it begins in Marrakesh, the ancient fortress city, and snakes high into the Atlas mountains, the Sahara’s northern boundary in this corner of Africa, before tobogganing down to the bleached, sun-baked sprawl of Ouarzazate, gateway to the desert. Stretched between contrasting locations, spellbinding in its scale and scope and so beautiful it makes you weep for the fragile beauty of this planet, it is a storyteller’s dream. And a Ferrari’s.
We slink out of Marrakesh before sunrise, climb the foothills as dawn begins to turn the sky luminous and hit the good stuff just as the sun clears the ridgeline and the road, previously sinuous but curving rather than chaotic, begins to crumple against the immovable mass of the High Atlas, buckling back on itself in ferociously twisted ribbons of captivating tarmac.
It is here, as in 1995, that our pilgrimage to the Sahara goes up (or, more accurately, down) a gear (or four). For this is a place and a road that could have been created for the express purpose of hedonism in cars of bewildering potency. In the original story Richard Bremner talks of battering the 512M’s silver-balled gearlever, of its flat-12 blaring, of windows dropped to better hear the engine’s spectacular cry, of feet skipping on pedals, and of arms twirling the unassisted steering this way and that. Close your eyes and even now, all these years later, you can see it, hear it, almost smell it; you can, with a little effort, recall an experience you never lived but which somehow feels more real than many you have.
THE STORY SO FAR...
In 1995 CAR’s Richard Bremner thrashed a 512M all the way from Maranello to the dunes of the Sahara. The story blew minds and redefined the magazine adventure drive. Nearly 30 years on we’re following in those wheel tracks in the Purosangue. Missed part 1? Download the CAR app for back issues or go to great magazines.co.uk/single-back-issues
Now, as then, there are no signs of the winter snows that can see the N9 gated shut, particularly between January and March. Today is a perfect winter’s day, the air crisp but mild in the Californian style. So perfect, in fact, I’m in no hurry to see it pass. The Purosangue, on the other hand, appears hell-bent on rocketing its way across this stretch of road as quickly as it can.
To be in its hot seat on a road like
