32 countries and counting in an AMG V8
Meet the French couple who have driven their monster Mercedes all over Europe.
The border guards would hear Charles and Céline Morin long before they saw them, the mighty roar of their Mercedes SLK 55 AMG announcing their arrival at yet another country on their bucket list.
The couple are well aware that embarking on road trip after road trip in a 5.5-litre V8-powered convertible is not exactly the most practical of choices. The former motoring journalist-turned historian and his English teacher partner describe themselves as being “as thirsty for discoveries as our car is for fuel!”
“We love cars with history, and our common dream is a Mercedes 300SL,” says Charles, but the SLK is certainly proving to be a capable companion, having taken the Morins to their 31st country in 2022 (excluding their home in France).
Spending weeks at a time in the compact confines of the convertible requires careful preparation and packing, but Charles says it’s surprising just how much gear the car can swallow. “It’s a real Swiss army knife,” he says.
“Our most memorable trop is our first one through the Balkans,” he continues. “We fell in love with Sarajevo and the biggest shock was Albania, which is an amazing, secret and not very loved country.”
Charles takes a deep breath to rattle through the impressive list of the countries they’ve passed through so far: “Andorra, Monaco, Great Britain, Italy, Vatican, San Marino, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Republika Srpska, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo and Greece.”
Next on the list are Bulgaria and Scotland, while the Morins also have ambitions beyond Europe. “We have two dreams. The first is to drive across the USA and the second is to reach Beijing via the S(i)LK road.”
60 years since Goldfinger hit cinemas Rolls-Royce has gone back to the scene of one of the film’s most famous sequences – the Furka Pass in Switzerland.