The Road to Zuffenhausen

Written by Gus Gregory – Automotive photographer and presenter of Flipping Bangers.

I feel I should explain, if you want to know my favourite road then you have to first understand the magnitude of distilling my love on roads, to just one.

For thirty years, I’ve been a collector of roads for my work as an automotive photographer. I would travel the world looking for the perfect road. I would be briefed where the job was, and I would locate the perfect road. I have a huge library of maps and have plied my trade down through Africa, across Mongolia and Russia, through both North and South America. In fact, on every continent on earth.

I have detailed maps of all the routes of the great Italian race – very useful if you spend a great amount of time in Maranello and Santa Agata and also the great American race, the Pan American.

So you see, I have seen a lot of road, a lot of road. I’ve even driven to Timbuktu.

‘The’ drive

If I have to plump for one, then it will, be this one. The ingredients were perfect, the weather was perfect and the timing was perfect. I was totally self-reliant and I would just follow my nose north. I was on a shoot outside Rome, very close to the route of the Mille Miglia, on the SS2 and I had to get home, but I first had to take a Porsche back to Zuffenhausen.

I set my alarm for 12 midnight, the greatest time to start any journey. The moon was full and would accompany me all the way until sunrise on the M8 in Germany. So nothing on the roads, a beautiful moon-lit night and a bog-standard 911 Carrara 2, no map, no sat-nav – just following signs north and cutting through the Italian countryside.

Florence, Bologna, Modena, Verona, Trento, Bolzano.

Heading north, picking up the sweeping deserted motorway, winding like a river up to the Brenner pass, illuminated by the moon glinted off the snow- capped, mountains.

Passo del Brenner, Munich, Stuttgart, Zuffenhausen

Refuel and sleep in the car. I set my alarm for 20 minutes, the perfect recharge nap to get me back to full concentration. The pass was getting busier, the trucks were waking up.

Up to Munich to pick up the M8 and the first rays of the sun as I flew west along the deserted motorway. When I arrive at the factory, I sit in the car for a beat, and I listen to the tings and ticks of cooling metal. I know it was a special journey. All the elements were right. Oil and water levels perfect. On any other day there would have been road works, heavy traffic, rain or any number of things to slow and frustrate, but there wasn’t. it rarely happens, but it did.

A hot knife through butter from Rome to Stuttgart.

Even as that work slows, and other things take its place, the obsession continues. Our family holidays are organised around huge road trips which have included, Northern Peru, over the Andes down and into the rain forest of the Amazon basin. Crossing Patagonia down to the I40, to take in gaucho rodeos in El Bolson in the shadow of the magnificent Torres Del Pine.

I did want to mention, just touch on, one of the greatest roads to drive on this earth. When my wife and I got together, we did a trip around the whole of southern Peru. We hired a HiLux in Lima and set off, taking it in turn to drive. The road that joins Julica on the northern shore of Lake Titicaca, to the city of Arequipa, runs around the Salinas Y Aguada Blanca National Park. The 34A and also the 34C are breathtaking. Wide, smooth and deserted as they flow down through the national park to the Panamerican Highway and for me, this was like finally finding THE road.

It’s a way away mind, but wow, what a road.

Editors note: No photos were taken by Gus on this trip (he was too busy driving!) but we wanted to celebrate his extraordinary work so please enjoy some of his stunning photographs.