Something slightly different, but on-topic since this is about confessions and guilty car pleasures right? So here’s one:
I ragged the hell out of my hire car:
driving through a Slovenian mountain pass:
in order to meat meet Mr Žnopresk himself, @NormanVauxhall (selfies not included)
I was a little ambitious in my target and had a tight schedule, and because I was staying in Triglav National Park which is lovely but also very out of the way, all of it was on these tiny roads you could barely squeeze a B seg on while hurtling around blind corners and hairpins hoping you didn’t plow into a car/van/cyclist/pedestrian/tractor or fly off the edge off a cliff/into a tree/into a house.
Forty kilometers of this stuff be like Initial D Rally yeeeee boi
The gradients were also quite steep, the poor 0.9L 3-pot could barely handle the uphill. The downhill, however, was pure left-foot braking, heel-toe downshift Eurobeat Intensifies. It’s not speeding if you don’t actually break the posted speed limit, right? But the real trick is doing the posted speed limit around a hairpin!
Without the immediate threat of wrapping oneself around a tree or flying off into a gorge, the view was spectacular.
The village of Kneža, from the road above
All-in-all, the mission was successful, I was back home in time for tea, and the car was none the worse for wear (I won’t mention anything about the slightly cooked brakes). And I know how many people here speak of the joys of the mountain pass. But it was a bit reckless, hence a guilty pleasure.
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