We want to hear your road trip horror stories! (Inspired by the Nurburgring trip that made me despise the Audi RS7)

We want to hear your road trip horror stories! Whether it’s break downs, traffic, illness… whatever caused you to wish you’d never set off on your journey, we want to hear it! Hit the comments and we’ll round up the best. To inspire you, here’s a story I never thought I’d tell.

We want to hear your road trip horror stories! Whether it’s break downs, traffic, illness… whatever caused you to wish you’d never set off on your journey, we want to hear it! Hit the comments and we’ll round up the best. To inspire you, here’s a story I never thought I’d tell. It happened last year, and was supposed to form part of a feature about road tripping to the Nurburgring, but I was so thoroughly fed up when I returned that I never wrote it up and tried to forget it happened. So, in the spirit of sharing, here goes!

I get to do some pretty cool things in this job, and when Audi offered me the chance to drive an RS7 to the Nurburgring to watch the six hour World Endurance Championship race I was obviously pretty excited. I’d driven an RS6 shortly before that and absolutely adored it, so as I dropped behind the wheel to set off on the 400-mile journey to motorsport Mecca, with four countries and an ocean between me and my destination, I was in good spirits.

The first problem occurred when I got to the ferry terminal late due to some crazy traffic, and had to wait an extra hour to get on board a later boat. No biggie, I thought. Once in France it was all plain sailing, but then I hit Belgium, and tried to make my way around Brussels. My carefully laid plan to avoid the city during rush hour was now screwed thanks to my little ferry mishap, so I found myself stationary on Brussels’ ring road getting more and more fed up. Then the sat nav popped up saying there was traffic on my route, and asked if I’d like a diversion around it. Hell yeah, I would! So with my new route in place I skipped off the highway… and into the town centre. Yep, the Audi took me out of the frying pan and into the fire, so I spent the next three hours in stop start traffic trying to get out of the gridlocked city.

Speaking of stop start, the RS7’s stop start tech pushed me to boiling point until I dived into the menus to figure out how to turn it off. You see, in most cars the engine stops when you have your foot on the brake and are stationary, then starts again as soon as you lift off the brake. Same’s true of the Audi, but for some reason it also applies the handbrake when the engine turns off, and is slow to release it, so you lift off the brake, push the accelerator and nothing happens, so you push a bit harder and then the handbrake suddenly releases, catapulting you forward. It means you’re sat in a near-£100k car with everyone watching you kangaroo about. Not a cool look.

With Brussels finally behind me, I started to make some progress. As my destination grew ever closer, the fuel gauge was dropping closer and closer to empty, but I’d managed to keep the range above the remaining mileage, so my plan was to get near to the Nurburgring before filling up to avoid expensive highway fuel prices. Unfortunately, the Nurburgring is in the middle of nowhere, and none of the rural petrol stations were open late (yeah, it was past bed time by the time I even got close to the circuit), which left me on the orange light in a 550bhp car cruising through the Eifel forest well below the speed limit. Not cool and super stressful!

We want to hear your road trip horror stories! (Inspired by the Nurburgring trip that made me despise the Audi RS7)

Once I finally made it to the circuit, my spirits were briefly lifted by the famous red Nurburgring sign, but that was short lived. I was staying in the hotel that’s attached to the circuit, but the sat nav was saying I’d already arrived, so I asked a car park attendant how to get to the hotel. Unfortunately, he didn’t speak very good English (better than my German, though), but from what I could gather he was saying I couldn’t park at the hotel and that I had to speak to some other guys. Well, I was more than annoyed as I’d been told I had parking, so I approached a group of other attendants further down the road. Again, none spoke English, so I was left standing in a field at midnight, unwittingly 100 yards from my destination, waiting for someone to help me. Eventually a bloke turns up and tries to make me give him €20 to park in his field. I politely declined and as Friday turned to Saturday I went crawling along looking for the hotel. I finally found it just next to where I’d been gormlessly standing for 15 minutes before, and a very polite hotel employee ushered me into the car park beside a Porsche 911 GT3 RS and Koenigsegg One:1. I was too exhausted to take a picture, and the latter was gone by morning, sorry!

Despite being shattered from what was ultimately a 12 hour journey (should’ve taken eight hours, tops) I had an utterly fantastic weekend watching the racing and mucking about on the Nordschleife with Boosted Boris. But the road trip from hell wasn’t finished with me yet.

The journey home was fairly uneventful, though the sports seats were giving me chronic back ache. I even managed to avoid Brussels city centre, and was treated to an incredible electrical storm as I left Belgium.

Parked up at Calais, waiting out the strike
Parked up at Calais, waiting out the strike

As I arrived at Calais, the border guard clocked me in and sent me on my merry way with a smile and a quick “by the way, the French ferry drivers are striking, no ships have left all night.” My heart sank, and as I eventually found where I was supposed to be going I joined a long queue of fed up holidaymakers in a torrential downpour. I also discovered that night that the RS7 does not make a comfortable bed.

After about 10 hours in the claustrophobic Audi, we were finally let onto a ferry as daylight broke, and a few hours later I parked the RS7 up outside my flat, stumbled into my flat and collapsed into bed. The whole experience gave me an utter hatred of the RS7, and whenever I see one I can’t help but recoil in disgust. It looks great and goes like stink, but I have too many bad memories…

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Comments

Delightful Citizen (Classic Truck Squad)

You parked next to a Koenigsegg one:1 and didn’t get a picture?
Suuuure Darren, I totally buy that!

02/05/2016 - 19:05 |
6 | 0

my thought lol, takes a picture besides the porsch instead

02/05/2016 - 19:34 |
0 | 0

Can confirm, One:1 WAS there during that day.

02/05/2016 - 22:56 |
4 | 0

It was dark and my phone camera is borked and takes such terrible photos at night it’s not even worth trying most of the time, so thought I’d just get a shot in the morning but it had gone!

02/08/2016 - 13:44 |
0 | 0
Deus Robert Paulsen

I didnt have 1 really bad roadtrip. My cars where all reliable. None broke down ever. And all of them were older then 18 years and japanese. It just was sometimes bad to drive like 500km and 4 grown Men in a honda prelude. The backseat of a prelude bb3 is a little but just a little bit bigger then the (none existing) backseat of my miata. So yeah that was mostly bad but still kinda fun because as a driver i had more space.

02/05/2016 - 19:07 |
8 | 0

I don’t know how bad the rear leg room in the BB3 Prelude is but in my BB6 there is barley any room for a child with the front seats mid way back :P

02/05/2016 - 21:37 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

Me and my family rented a 2012 Chrysler 300 and tool it to Florida for 4 days. On the way there we had just passed Macon and someone’s tire over heated and absolutely obliterated the side of this car, and then the largest part of the runner bounced off the road and struck the windshield right in front of me. Luckily I was in the navigator’s seat. Now every time we go past Macon my eyes are wide for danger.

02/05/2016 - 19:12 |
1 | 0
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Macon, GA?

02/05/2016 - 19:48 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

Not quite a road trip, but I was driving through town last month in my WRX, with my freshly installed used transmission and after a swift 1-2 shift, I broke my clutch disc, some gears and a bearing in the tranny. 400km after my last transmission gave out after much more mileage and abuse than this one. I’d say I lost around 2000$ in one shift. Plus around 1200 a month earlier with the last transmission. F**kin’ glassbox. I was actually saving for a STI drivertrain swap with the brembos and all. Guess it’s gonna have to wait cause the car cost me nearly 2 months worth of salary, in a few hours of driving.

02/05/2016 - 19:19 |
1 | 0
H5SKB4RU (Returned to CT)

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Are subies reliable? Im looking to buy a 2005.WRX STI… I found a few in 2nd hand dealer but i don’t know where to look first

02/05/2016 - 20:54 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

Had to drive a prius for 4 hours on a highway.

02/05/2016 - 19:22 |
3 | 0
Cory McGowan

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Lol

02/05/2016 - 21:37 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

Right after graduating from high school, my friend and I decided to drive my old 1993 Ford Explorer 750 miles to celebrate. About 80 miles from our destination, it started overheating, and it lost most of, if not all of its power. Back then, I knew nothing about cars, and I said screw it, let’s just keep trudging along at 25mph. Eventually, it gave up and wouldn’t go any further. Luckily, we got a tow truck to take it and us to the nearest town to get a ride to our destination. Come to find out, one of the spark plugs broke off and destroyed a cylinder.

02/05/2016 - 19:31 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

Lmao, is asked if he can be next to a Koenigsegg 1:1 and he takes a photo with the Porsche besides it.

02/05/2016 - 19:33 |
0 | 0
Jables TheEpic

This was a few years back.

After my brother’s college graduation, my family met up at Mount Rushmore, SD for a bunch of tourist stuff. Me and my dad decided to go to pick up shirts at the Hill City Harley Davidson shop. (It’s our tradition that on any road trip where we take our bikes, we get a shirt or two from dealerships along the way.)

South Dakota doesn’t have a helmet law, so we were wearing sunglasses and t-shirts because screw the jackets, it was hot!

About three miles from town, a goddamn hail storm comes rolling in out of nowhere. And wearing only “protective” eyewear and t-shirts, we got pelted hard. It was like being shot by gravel fired from a constant air cannon. And every time I would open my mouth to scream because of the pain, I would get in the back of my throat.

Soldiering on, we roll into town, looking like we just went through a sand blasting procedure, and poof! The storm stops. Gone as fast as it came. A very nice lady gave us some ice from her cooler to rub our wounds, AKA, the entire front side of our bodies.

Then we went inside the Harley shop, got our shirts, and rode back to the group.

And I’d do it again.

02/05/2016 - 19:37 |
2 | 0
FLixy Madfox

I once drove a car from…Wait, I dont have a car

02/05/2016 - 19:42 |
0 | 3
Anonymous

Was driving through Yellowstone national park in my dads Chrysler 300s and we ran over a ladder that flew out of someone’s truck bed . Spent the next 4 hours in a Chrysler dealership getting the undercarriage fixed. Worst road trip ever.

02/05/2016 - 19:43 |
0 | 0