5 ways to go on a road trip in a luxury sports car without buying one
You don’t need to own a luxury sports car to drive one on a road trip to remember. Car makers from Morgan to Aston Martin offer driving experiences that can take you from a local foray to an international adventure. Here are five favourites.
Porsche
Porsche Experiences can be a simple as a half-day drive out of the factory gates through the Black Forest (as our Creative Director Adrian discovered), or as ambitious as a ten-day trek across the sand dunes of Namibia. In between the company offers a huge variety of guided tours from Iceland to Ireland, the Austrian Alps to the Croatian coast. Prices are from €3,000 to over €20,000, which is still considerably cheaper than a new Porsche.
Morgan
Morgan’s driving tours begin either at the doorstep of its Malvern factory or just further north in Manchester. Equipped with a new Plus Four and a pre-programmed GPS you’ll be sent off on a jaunt across the Cotswolds and into Wales or on a drive taking in the Yorkshire, the Pennines and the Lake District – just as Detour did in our Caterham Seven. With hotels stays included the Morgan driving tours cost from just over £3,000 per couple for a six-day trip.
Aston Martin
Aston Martin’s “Art of Living” drives will take you from the Gaydon factory through the Cotswolds and on to a high-speed thrash at Millbrook Proving Ground. Or if you prefer something more rugged then there’s a North Coast 500 experience in Scotland with detours to the Applecross Pass, John O’Groats, staying in a couple of castles along the way. Nobody does it better.
Bentley
We’ve driven the Pacific Coast Highway but never in a Bentley (hint, hint). The luxury British brand offers a week-long California excursion that begins in Nappa Valley wine country, passes through San Francisco, stops at the Pebble Beach Councours d’Elegance and finishes in Los Angeles. It’s hard to imagine a more pleasurable way to waft down the PCH than by Bentley.
Lamborghini
Lamborghini’s Esperienza Giro certainly sounds exotic. The Raging Bull company promises “the most exclusive destinations on five continents.” Listed on the Lambo website are Italy (of course), the USA, China, Japan and Oceania. Now, technically, you do need to be an owner to receive an invitation, but that doesn’t mean you necessarily have to drive your own car. “Each tour is different… always something exciting, unknown, very exclusive with the aim of letting owners experience something with Lamborghini that they can’t generally experience on their own,” Lamborghini’s spokeswoman told us.