Some say that this Romanian road is
the greatest in the world. We sample it in a Jaguar F-type – and then head to
another stretch of tarmac nearby that’s even better…
The road, the Transfagarasan pass, did look
incredible and I remember being really quite annoyed that some clever BBC
researcher had found it first – largely because it meant we couldn’t go there
without looking like simpering copycats. Damn and blast.
Then, about a year ago, I stumbled upon
something that made my heart skip a beat. It was a forum post buried in a
comments thread below a list of ’20 great driving roads’ or something similar.
The Transfagarasan had topped the list but this person said that the Romanians
were currently re-commissioning another incredible stretch of asphalt. A road
that was definitely even higher and arguably even more spectacular. Bingo.
The
F-type blends sharp dynamics with a compliant ride
Right now I'm standing at the top of the
very same dam that the Top Gear trio woke up at the bottom of. It's a
very long way down. Look tentatively over the edge and your head starts to swim
as your brain struggles to process the scale of the wall of concrete. Wander
over to the other side of the road and you have a much more serene but no less
impressive view as the beautiful blue-green surface of Lake Vidraru extends for
miles towards the mountains. It's calming until you begin to ponder on the
sheer mass of water being held back by the suddenly slim slice of concrete
you're standing on.
We could have just ignored the 7C (as the
Transfagarasan is more prosaically known) entirely. If this other road is as
good as I'm hoping then it would have been enough of a story in itself, but it
would also have been a bit of a waste to come all the way to Romania and then
haughtily ignore the already famous bit. Besides, there was always a strong
suspicion that there was much more to the Transfagarasan than we saw on
television...
Long,
sweeping headlights carry a signature light graphic
Landing in Bucharest yesterday afternoon,
we picked up 'our' F-type V8 S and then, after briefly getting lost, drove an
hour and a half north-west on the A1 to the city of Pitesti, which pretty much
marks the end of the motorway network in Romania. Why an F-type? Well, hairpins
looked like they would be available in abundance, so rear-wheel drive was
desirable. The F-type is also wieldy enough to cope with potentially narrow
roads and interesting traffic situations, while also being fast enough and
pretty enough to make the most of the grandeur of the setting we're hoping to
find. I also hadn't driven the V8 S variant before this trip and quite fancied
taking it for a quick blast round the block, so to speak.
The
F-type’s roof mechanism is 12kg lighter than that used on Jaguar’s XK
convertible
Anyway, this morning we set out north from
Pitesti to find the Transfagarasan highway. Actually locating the 7C (I'm
sorry, but Transfagarasan is going to give me an RSI, not to mention
lengthening this feature by a considerable amount if I keep typing it, so I'll
stick to 7C from now on if that's OK) wasn't tricky, but for much of the first
hour it just felt like an arrow-straight road connecting a series of
increasingly dilapidated towns and villages. Even in a somewhat muted wine red,
the F-type certainly stood out in the busy rush-hour traffic. Most of the cars
seemed to be '70s and '80s Dacias (unsurprising given that it's the company's
home market), which looked like small Chinese rip-offs of Saabs. They all
appeared to have been slammed, too. But only at the front. Weird.
