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!
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.
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…
Comments
I didnt have any horror stories. But I could have had some.. We had 2 convertibles rented (my dad and me) and actually because of insurance I wasnt allowed to drive.. Well, I did.. Nothing happened and I even drove in France (which I wasnt allowef because I had accompanied driving and stuff). It turned out good for me but I dont want to imagine if something had happened..
We were coming home from camping in a 1979 Bedford cf250 motor home. We approached a roundabout and when we pulled away the shaft that connected the overdrive to the transmission snapped so we were in the middle of a roundabout blocking some traffic waiting half an hour for RAC to pick us up. A RAC van arrived that was supposed to be for someone else had to pull us out of the roundabout and leave us by the side of the road so we wouldn’t block traffic. The recovery vehicle was sent where they kept saying it will be 45 minutes but it turned into 4 hours. It ruined the week for us.
Several years ago, I went to cornwall for a holiday at one of those Haven sites. Very nice, but the trip there was HORRENDOUS. To start with, we ended up in a 4hr traffic jam. Then, at a motorway service station, we ended up having to get the RAC to help us out since something had gone wrong with the car. To make matters worse, this was in my mums kia s*box, and because of delays it had become a 12 hour journey. Its a good job that I enjoyed the holiday though.
I bought a car that didnt run well. There was lots of uphills on my way back home. A Peugeot passed my when i was doing 50kph on 80kph zone going uphill. :(
another one who experienced eifel roads, fun when dry but horribly dangerous in the wet
My Story
Last summer I road tripped through England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Holland and Belgium. The trip was a huge success with the one of the main highlights being the Nurburgring, however it didn’t all go to plan.
We where in the alps in Italy when it was time to move on and get to Germany, The Stelvio pass was the route we chose to get Munich from where we was in Bormio. We started to climb to get to the start Stelvio pass when light rain suddenly turned into a horrific blizzard ! We where still climbing past 6000 feet when our RWD bmw could move no longer, we managed to turn around and headed back down as quick as possible!
Our 4 hour journey turned into a 14 hour one as we traveled south through the alps being careful of our altitude as around 5000 feet the snow would fall. Our sat nav broke and we was saved by a little skiing map we managed to get from a little tourist office, the map wasn’t detailed but had crucial elevation changes marked.
To be honest I was glad this happened, we got to see some stunning scenery such as the little towns in the alps and the numerous vineyards. The whole trip was an adventure !I would love to tell you what happened in all the different countries however there is simply too much to say, If anyone is thinking of doing a European road trip.. Go for it!
My dad and I were heading off to the Le Mans classic, my dad in his lotus 7 and I in my bmw e30 on Thursday morning. After loading up most of our camping gear, plus a few crates of beer, into the e30 we left and got 100m before realising the added weight in the back of the BMW was causing the tires on my wider wheels to rub badly and even start cutting into the tires. A hasty stop to transfer weight towards the front of the car and as many items as we could fit into the seven and several of the roads towards Dover caused us to miss the ferry to Calais with the rest of our travelling companions on it. The ferry trip was uneventful and once we landed in France we found a suitable place to pull over and attack the rear arches of the e30 to prevent anymore rubbing. Success! That was the end of the BMWs issues but not the end of our problems. An enjoyable thrash through the French countryside as we approached Roen lured us into a false sense of security. The tunnel around the city was closed due to a crashed truck and the subsequent diversion directed us through the city centre along with all the other traffic. Safe to say the stop start nature of the traffic and the ambient temperature hovering around 30c the cars were not enjoying it. So much so the lotus seven fried some wiring and died. Whilst my dad tried to salvage what he could of the wiring to get the car stated again I used some of my very limited French to ask a garage nearby if they could help or at least get us a recovery truck to tow the seven to our Aunt’s who lived about 40mins the other side of Roen. No luck however. After pulling apart the melted wiring and salvaging what we could we got the seven started again albeit without the electric fan working. Thankfully the traffic had died down and after taking a wrong turn and putting us another 30minutes away from our Aunt’s we made it there. Dad organised a tow to the closest ferry port for the next day (Friday) I headed alone down to meet the other lads at our campsite without further issues by around 1am having left the house in England 20hours earlier. Now my dad managed to get his tow and ferry to Portsmouth the Friday night arriving Saturday morning. He hammered to seven home without further problems as the traffic was light so the cooling was not an issue. Not to be defeated dad booked another ferry jumped in another car and was in Le Mans by the Saturday evening. So after 3 ferries 2 cars and 1 tow truck over 60 hours we were both at the Le Mans classic.
I had a great time driving roughly 1000km on some amazing roads in a rental 2015 Ford Focus last summer in Washington and Oregon. Doesn’t sound much horror but that’s because I didn’t mention the car had an automatic.
The horror.
Went on this road trip trough france a part of italy and swiss. My misses lost her bankcard right after i spend all my money. After getting some support from back home we could get 2 full tanks of gass. And we had to wait 3 days untill the rest of the money was transferd .Thank god we had a tent so we slept 3 nights in a tent on a camping and 1 night in the car. We where in swiss where we couldn’t get money from the atm while allmost running on fumes. Good luck for us we where 10 km away from the french bored where we could get money but the money wasnt transferd so we where stuck for a day in the mountains of france with our tent . The day after i haulled back to belgium trough swiss. It was a road trip i will never forget but i enjoy’d every single minute of it!
(Btw sorry for my bad english)
Drove to Cornwall for a family holiday with my dad and sister a few years back, hottest day in the UK that year, I think it was around 32 degrees and even hotter in the car, coming down the motorway we hit a pile up thanks a collision involving 3 caravans, a lorry and a 4x4 (found out on the radio) the tailback lasted for 7 hours, we eventually managed to escape the motorway at a police exit only to find the satnav stopped working and we ended up being entired lost in the middle of absolutely nowhere, after managing to find a route map in a small shop we were still 4 hours from Cornwall, we arrived after 13 hours of travelling, went straight down to the beach where my dad slipped and cracked his head open, the air ambulance was called, but we couldn’t all get in it so we were rushed to hospital on country roads, not dropping below 60 the whole way, if I hadn’t wasn’t watching my dad having blood pouring down his face it would have been pretty fun haha!