The World's Greatest Driving Road

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sleek Stratos
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Damn, I was going to mention the Tail of the Dragon! :lol:

Oh well, at the risk of being labelled as some punk Initial D kid, I could add that there's always the roads/mountains that star in it.... (click "go to gallery," then the six links at the top)

How come Stelvio Pass has never been in any racing game?? :drool:
 
It looks spectacular, but damn, it's just a trillion hairpins. I'd get really tired of those turns pretty quick and start complaining and rumbling, and I think my brakes would agree ;)
 
The Brecon Beacons have some great roads to go through, and the road surface is great aswell. Just mind the sheep :lol:

There's one particular hairpin that has been photographed in numerous Evo and Topgear articles and is shown on Top Gear and 5th Gear aswell.
 
The Tail Of The Dragon...

ArialDragon2L.jpg


I'm going in April :)
 
Mmmm. Stelvio, Scotland (just generally) and my own personal favourite the A686. It starts near Hexham goes up the Hartside Pass, through Alston and on to Penrith.
 
GilesGuthrie
That guy drove VERY well. Very measured. No kamikaze-ness about it.
Click to expand...

Perhaps we have to give some credit to the girlfriend sitting on the left side for that... :p

Totally agree, though.
 
Solid Lifters – Have you ever driven up Ridge Route? I live on it. :) The section between Castaic and my house is a blast to drive – in fact, I’m usually happy if there’s a backup on I-5, because then I have an excuse for taking Ridge Route. :D There’s a gate right above my house though, so now you can’t drive it all the way through. :(
 
The second area Solid mentioned is my home course, and my favorite driving road. It's the legendary GMR. I'm there a couple times a week, and it never gets old. Sadly, my tires are trashed, and I'm broke, so I haven't run in ages.
 
I'm still below the age for driving (licence only at 17, and only at 19 you can drive uaccompanied), but the best road over here (Israel) would be the road to Jerusalem and back to Tel-Aviv. The beginning is made out of boring straights - but when you get into the hill-area, it starts twisting, climbing, and some very steep downhill sections. Just try those uphill corners near the end, where you'll have to steer very precisely in order to maintain a 100km/h speed AND stay in your lane. Once, it rained really hard, with real streams flowing down the road, and we actually had a hard time gripping at 30-40km/h (and still skidded here and there). Plus, there are all those smaller roads around, with even more turns, and less width (yeah, one lane per direction). This would be one of my first targets when I get my licence - the road to Beit-Shemesh.
 
The Snake pass in winter, not really the best driving road though but a bit of an animal :lol:.
 
Snake pass, cracking little road that. Me and a few mates went up there about 4 months ago now. Was great fun especially seeing my mate set his brakes on fire and having to stop at the bottom after the VERY steep downhill section with all the hairpins. Another funny moment was watching the focus's dashboard i was in light up like a christmas tree as the car jumped at the crest of a bridge/old railway crossing (whatever it is) and spat itself sideways. I thought it was incredibly funny untill i realised that there is a 50ft drop to the left of me and not any barriers to stop you for most of the road.

Spec....
 
we have a somewhat twisty road, but it's not to be driven fast (they put a damn snooty neighborhood there.) called Grand View Drive, where, supposedly, Teddy Roosevelt procliamed that it was "The World's Most Beautiful Drive."

grandview.jpg

Peoria_Grandviewdrive.jpg


unfortunately, I couldn't find a whole lot of maps. Some nice views, a GT5 photomode spot, but not much else...unless PD were to snake a track through there....
 
http://www.tailofthedragon.com/

I see The Tail of the Dragon has been mentioned before. I tend to like roads that have had features written on them in Road & Track and other magazines. It can see some traffic when big groups take on the road and driving events take place. There's a nice tree with crushed gas tanks and busted helmets as "souveniers" from many a bike crash. It'd be fun racing it up with friends.
I also envy State Route 26 between Woodsfield and Marietta, Ohio. A few times I've heard this 50-mile stretch mentioned in my magazines.
I hear SR 23 south of Eureka Springs in Arkansas, The Pig Trail, is quite treacherous.
All the other mentioned roads sounds amazing as well.
 
I've just completed a 6,400 mile roadtrip visiting each county in the state of Colorado. As you can imagine, I've seen some of the most spectacular roads imaginable although unfortunately the trip was done in a compact SUV so I couldn't enjoy many of them.

In Automobile's 20th-anniversary issue, they list the 20 best roads on Earth. Two of them are in Colorado. One, the "Million Dollar Highway," (aka US-550) between Ouray and Silverton, was quite spectacular, but the very best road in terms of both scenery and twisty turns was State Highway 82, which is the drive from Twin Lakes, Colorado, to Aspen, Colorado. It peaks at 12,100 feet (3700 meters) at Independence Pass, which is the Continental Divide, and at some points get as narrow as two cars - without a shoulder or any room to either side. As I was driving down the pass to the west - towards Aspen - I saw a guy coming up in an E36 M3 sedan, going balls-out around a switchback. Classic...

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It's so narrow, the speed limit is 15mph here

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View of one of the less-twisty portions, from a pullout at about 11,500 feet

Some road notes from my roadtrip include covering 82 miles in 59 minutes, for an average of just under 85mph (137kmh), which is classic when you consider I was doing it in a Mazda Tribute and the entire road was one lane in each direction with a speed limit of 65mph. I also forded a small river and upon getting to the other side had to deal with smoke billowing up from the engine (and how to get back). Another classic was going eight miles up the roughest, narrowest road I've ever seen only to be stopped dead-on by a boulder with no room to turn around in an area with a 500-foot drop to the left and a mountain to the right.
 

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