Greatest drives

Ford Focus to Morocco

The Autocar Archivist — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:00:00 GMT

You might remember reading one of Colin Goodwin's finest stories over your Christmas dinner 2004. Our festive double issue that year contained the yarn of Colin's week-long drive south, through Europe, to Morocco, in a brand new Ford Focus, with new staff snapper Mitch Peshavria.

As you'll read, during his week with the brand new Ford, Colin managed to traverse cities, climb mountains, and get stuck in the sand; his full story is below.

"2000 miles from home and we're up to our axles in sand…" by Colin Goodwin

Contents: part one - "so who's idea was this, exactly?"; part two - heading into Africa; part three - of all the towns in all the world...; part four - stuck in the sand.

Part one: so who's idea was this, exactly?

I should have been watching what he was doing more closely, but I still want to beat him to death with his own tripod. Photographer Mitch Peshavria has got our Ford Focus stuck in the side of a sand dune well over 2000 miles from home.

To be fair, we are probably not going to die out here. It is winter on the edge of the Sahara and the temperature is no more than a pleasant 25 degrees C. A metalled road is only a few miles away and we have half a bottle of flat Sprite in the car.

Besides, I'd rather be stuck in sand in the Sahara than on the M25. Remember when the original Focus was launched? We drove it for days and nights around the M25, taking it in turns to do six-hour driving stints. What a stupid idea. The car itself performed admirably, as it should have done. Multiple laps of London's outer ring road are more a test of a driver's patience and sanity than of the ability of a car.

It is also, unless you are one of those poor confused drivers who laps the M25 hoping to find the right exit, something you are very unlikely ever to do yourself. You would, however, love this particular trip. The brief is to take a brand new Ford Focus and drive it as far south as possible in a week. A very thorough test of a car and a great adventure through stunning countryside to boot.

We left early on Thursday morning, our dark green five-door Focus TDCi full of camera gear, a tent in case we get adventurous, luggage for two and a guitar for those David Crosby moments in Marrakech.

For Peshavria this trip is like an extended job interview. There's a vacancy for a staff photographer at Autocar and this man has got his eyes firmly set on it. If he does well here he gets the job. Simple.

Not surprisingly, he is dead keen; so keen that he's already burning through the Fujichrome at Dover, photographing a special branch officer at the port who, understandably, has a fit. He calms down after we have explained ourselves and warns us we'd have really been in the fertiliser if we'd snapped one of his French colleagues. (Never mind the French, imagine where careless snapping in Morocco will put us.)

France passes without drama. Glad we asked for a turbodiesel Focus. The 2.0 TDCi Ghia comes with cruise control as standard, which when set at 80mph with the six-speed gearbox in top means purring along at just over 2000rpm and fuel consumption of about 46mpg. That means that the 57-litre tank should give us a good 550 miles between stops.

We stop for the night in Bordeaux and then leave early the next morning, passing through Biarritz for breakfast and then across the Spanish border at Hendaye. Of course, by now we've abandoned the cop-friendly cruising speed and we're hammering along the motorway that winds through the mountainous Basque region towards Bilbao.

We pass a rather battered first-generation Mondeo wearing a black version of one of those Comic Relief noses on its grille. A nose that flashes. Eighty five euros down and we're on our way again, back with cruise control set and eyes peeled for anything that could be police.

Part two: heading into Africa

Late next morning we're at Tarifa, 100 miles to the west of Malaga and about to board the ferry to Tangier. 1400 miles under our wheels and only a 35-minute blast across the Med between us and Morocco. This is where the adventure really starts.

I've driven to Morocco before, so I should have been better mentally prepared for the pantomime that is Tangier immigration and customs. I bought a box of 200 Lucky Strikes on the ferry specifically for bribes, but it seems that either the touts are on a health kick or that fags are not quite the valuable currency they were on my last visit in 1995. The latter, I fear.

As soon as you arrive at the check-point you're surrounded by dodgy-looking blokes offering to help with your transition through immigration. They've all got passes around their necks that may or may not be official. Telling the chief of police where to go is not a good thing, so you select the iffy-looking bloke, give him your passport, and hope that he doesn’t ask any questions that a few euros can’t mysteriously answer.

There are some interesting parts of Tangier, but its really a bustling port town with a mixture of faded colonial buildings, new offices and busy shopping streets. We head straight out on the main road to Rabat and to the town of Asilah, about 30 miles along the Atlantic coast.

We are under strict instructions from the editor not to get carried away with expenses on this trip, so he's going to be chuffed with tonight’s chosen accommodation: a twin-bedded room at the Hotel Marhaba for the very reasonable price of 80 dirhams, which works out at about £5.50 for the night.

Just outside Asilah there's a motorway that runs down the coast past the capital Rabat and on to Casablanca. Only a few miles of this were built last time I was here. The average income for farm workers, of which there are a great many in the fertile areas in the north of the country, is around £50 per month, so not surprisingly the new péage is very much for the middle-class Moroccans and tourists. Just one speeding fine from one of the numerous radar traps would utterly stuff the average Moroccan's finances.

Part three; of all the towns, in all the world…

If, like me, Casablanca is one of your favourite films, prepare for disappointment. It ain't quite the place it used to be. Today it's a madcap city full of traffic, overhung with smog and very short of places like Rick's. Like the couple in the film, we're keen to leave Casablanca. Especially as there is a bit of an incident when Peshavria is shopped by a local to policemen as he takes photos of the Focus. Fortunately it all ends in smiles after the police chief arrives to quiz us.

From Casablanca there's a short stretch of new motorway that takes us in the direction of Marrakech. It finishes in a place called Settat, from where we join a main road that twists and turns for a further 100 miles to Marrakech, nestling in the shadow of the mighty Atlas mountains.

We've now covered nearly 2000 miles and the Focus hasn't missed a beat. Most impressive is the cabin quality, especially the dashboard, and the sophistication of the thing. Dynamically, it hasn't really leapt forward from the original, but in quality it's moved onto another continent.

I hardly recognise Marrekech. Never have I been to a place so changed in such a short time; not even India. There seems to be a whole new modern city that has sprung from nowhere, including several McDonald's. And there's so much more cash about. On the way in we see three Porsche Cayennes, a BMW M3 and, get this, a new Maserati Quattroporte. My trip in 1995 was with colleague Richard Bremner in a Ferrari F512M and boy, did we stand out. The only flash car we saw then was an early '80s Porsche 911.

Thankfully, the very special part of the city, the Medina and the souks, is little changed. We hole up in the Hotel Royal Tazi only a few minutes' walk from Djeema-el-Fna, which is the focal point of the old city, where fruit and food stalls are set up in the evening and from where the narrow streets of the souks fan out in all directions.

Travelling in Morocco can take a little patience and understanding, but in among the mayhem and apparent disorder, life is very well organised. A tip to the hotel porter leads us to an underground car park and another tip has the car guarded overnight, all at a reasonable price. Life in London might look better organised and safer, but there you really are being robbed.

If you follow in our footsteps, allow at least a couple of days in Marrakech because there's lots to see – for me it's the jewel of Morocco. However, we're ploughing on south to the part of the country that really knocks me sideways: the start of the Sahara desert.

First, the Atlas mountains are in the way. No motorways here, just a hundred mile drive across the most stunning roads that wind through snow-capped mountains. Our goal is the town of Ouarzazarte on the other side, built by the French colonialists in 1928 as a gateway to the Sahara.

The Focus is fitted with electro-hydraulic power steering that has various models from Comfort to Sport. Sounds impressive, but it's not as good as the previous car's hydraulic steering system. It's not, however, bad enough to spoil an incredibly challenging drive.

We hit Ouarzazarte just as the sun dips behind the mountains. As well as being the gateway to the Sahara, the town is also the centre of the Moroccan film industry. Dozens of Hollywood blockbusters have been filmed around here: the last biggie was Gladiator. You'll find bits of props and memorabilia in the town's bars and restaurants. We book into the Hotel Riad Salam, a modern joint that's above backpacker levels but still very good value.

From Ouarzazarte we head south again and follow the Draa valley to a place called Zagora. The valley is right out of the Bible, with a narrow band of palm trees clinging to the side of the Draa river; a ribbon of green along which there are dozens of villages. The road is spectacular but not to be driven quickly, because anything can be around the next corner and often is.

Through Zagora and over another band of mountains and you come to small town called M'Hamid. Here the road stops. South is about 1500 miles of nothing until you get reach Tombouctou. But before that, in only 25 miles, is the Algerian border with Morocco. The political situation in Algeria is dogdy at the moment, to say the least: the whole border in this area is disputed and has been for years.

Part four: stuck in the sand

We are now where you joined us at the start. Abouth 10 miles before M'Hamid there's a piste that leads to a group of classic sand dunes. You don't find Lawrence of Arabia-type dunes just anywhere: most are in Algeria. Not surprisingly, Peshavria is desperately keen to photograph the car next to them. I, however, am scared stiff of getting the car stuck. No sooner have we left the metalled road than I select a dune that you could probably replicate on Bournemouth beach, but at least we are not going to get stuck. Except that we do.

Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I do not lose my rag easily. The prospect of a telephone call to Ford to tell them that their new Focus is stuck up to its axles in sand around about 2400 miles south of Essex is enough to get me somewhat inflamed.

We do a bit of frantic sand bailing until a local lad appears from nowhere and surveys the situation. "Pas de problem. Have you got a mobile phone?" he asks. "My friend is not far away in a car."

It turns out that, rather than being in a 4x4 as I'd expected, his friends Said Bahalou is in a Renault 4. Goodwin rather forlornly hands Bahalou the tow rope that Ford has thoughtfully provided. It isn't needed. For these guys the Sahara is home and within minutes they've extricated the Focus from the sand.

We're offered tea in Bahalou's tent next to the really impressive sand dunes. There's a temptation to distrust strangers in a place like Morocco, not least because guide books are often over-cautious, but if you're travelled widely you develop a second sense and Bahalou appears to be a sound chap. Certainly sound enough to be allowed to test drive the new Focus in conditions that its makers probably never envisaged. He's impressed by the equipment but quite rightly points out the simplicity of his Renault, or 'scorpion of the desert' as he calls it, is rather better suited to the Saharan lifestyle.

Certainly it would be a sight easier to clean the insides of the Renault than it will be the Focus. The Ford people will have a fit when they see the car. There's sand all over the place – some of which seems to have got into the stereo and centre console because the temperature controls no longer work and my Neil Young CD won't eject.

Add to the sand situation a few scrapes and scratches from a couple of 'inc idents' in Marrakech. A chap carrying an enormous bundle of pipes on a bicycle flew out of a side turning and rammed the side of the Focus, hitting it in the driver's window. Thank God I didn't have the window down or he'd have speared me. It did give him a huge moment though, which he only just saved.

And then there's the Spirograph patterns on the rear offside wing caused by a motorbike's footrest. But that could happen on the M25. It's been a heck of a trip. And as expected, rather more entertaining than 85 laps of the M25. Also rather more informative, truth be told.

We've driven through almost every weather condition, from fog in France through to blazing sun in the Draa valley. We've driven along arrow-straight desert roads and across twisting mountain passes. We've been up to 2000 metres and down to sea level. I don't for a minute expect that many Focus owners will need to know this, but we can also confirm that Ford's latest is more than able to handle light off-piste work in the Sahara. And in the hands of an expert like Said Bahalou it could tackle even more challenging terrain.

Technorati tags: Ford Focus, Morocco, Marrakech, Africa, Goodwin

The Road Trip

The Autocar Archivist — Wed, 01 Jan 2003 12:20:00 GMT

In October 2002, Autocar's motoring editor Steve Sutcliffe, road test editor Chris Harris and photographer Tom Salt set out on a journey that they called 'The Road Trip'.

But this was no ordinary road trip. Published in January 2003, this was the story of a bona-fide supercar, the Lamborghini Murcielago, and the hottest of hot hatches, the Ford Focus RS.

Could a 20-grand hot hatch really live with a £163,000 supercar over 5000 miles of the finest driving roads in Europe?

In the quest to find out, we topped 200mph on an autobahn, recorded a sub-eight minute lap of the Nurburgring and visited Spain, France, Germany and Italy in one long and unforgettable week.

A total of 9489 combined miles and 682 gallons of super unleaded later, we reached our conclusion. And no, it isn't the one you probably expect.

THE ROAD TRIP, by Steve Sutcliffe and Chris Harris

Contents:

Sutcliffe's story: the drive to Nice, problems on the autoroute, storming the Route Napoleon, rain in Spain, maximum attack on the autobahn.

Harris' story: collecting the Lambo, smoked by the Focus, deafened by the Murcielago, Sutcliffe goes feral, 200mph from the passenger seat, homeward bound in the Lambo.

SUTCLIFFE: DAY 1 STEVE PICKS UP THE FOCUS RS AND DRIVES TO NICE

At half 11 on a cold October morning a glistening new Focus RS arrived outside the Autocar office. It looked perfect. Compact, tough, preened and ready to take on the world.

For some reason I immediately wrote the following in my notebook: "No matter what we may have proved by the end of this story, right here this car looks, and is, the perfect hot hatch."

I also wrote the number 9355 down. It was my wild guess at what the odometer might read in one week's time, having moved on somewhat from the 4288 figure showing.

The journey to Nice where I was due to rendezvous with Chris Harris, snapper Tom Salt, and a Lamborghini Murcielago, was largely uneventful.

That night I stopped at Reims, about 180 miles south of Calais, and got some shut-eye in a cheap hotel. It was a pretty uneventful slog south...

SUTCLIFFE: DAY 2 REIMS TO NICE

… until an hour into my journey on day two and the Ford's engine started misfiring. Badly.

Every time I put my foot down there was a big cough and a splutter from beneath the bonnet and the throttle would die. But if I backed off and just tickled the accelerator I could - just about maintain momentum. Experimenting revealed that I could cruise between 103-106mph on the level before the splutter. But hills were a killer: on a gradient I couldn't coax more than 85mph out of the RS.

So I called Paul Wilson, who prepares and services all of Henry's press cars. And he asked: "Is it cold, Steve, the weather I mean?" Now I know we Brits discuss the climate wherever possible but this, I thought, wasn't a good time.

"I'm in trouble," I said, "and so is one of your motors. The magazine has spent hundreds on flights, the snapper is booked for a week, I'm in the middle of nowhere with a dying Focus RS - and you just want to talk about the weather?"

"The engine might be over-boosting if the ambient temperature is really cold," said Paul. And so 300 miles into our 10,000-mile marathon we had a crisis.

After plenty of mobile conversations with my new best mate, Paul, we decided I should press on towards Nice. Ford would send a second Focus RS to meet us that night, just to play safe.

"I bet it clears itself when you get further south and the temperature starts to rise," said Paul. He was right. An hour later I was cruising at 120mph on a deserted autoroute, one eye on the side of the road for the radar meanies, memories of my early morning panic a distant blip. By the time I reached Nice a lot later, I'd forgotten all about our little problem.

In fact, I was more convinced than ever of the Ford's enormous range of abilities by the time Harris, Salt and the Lambo hove into view. On the way there the RS had proved faster, more refined, quieter and calmer than I was expecting. I had enjoyed listening to six CDs on the trot, and even the high-mounted driver's seat hadn't bugged me they way I thought it might.

The only black mark was the fuel consumption. Okay, I'd been doing a steady 120mph but to get here I'd had six fills of around 50 litres each. Over 900 miles. Which meant 14mpg. Oh dear.

SUTCLIFFE: DAY 3 MONACO TO SPAIN VIA THE ROUTE NAPOLEON

Having swapped into the second Focus and had a dubious meal in an expensive hotel in Nice we headed for Monaco early next morning. Bad move.

The only thing more awful than the weather was the traffic. Watching Harris squeeze the Murcielago through the narrow streets above Monte Carlo and make a series of noisy three point turns when, inevitably, we got lost, I've never been so glad not to be driving a Lamborghini.

But that feeling faded PDQ when we reached our next destination: the N85, the Route Napoleon, possibly the finest stretch of single carriageway tarmac you'll find anywhere on this planet. It starts in Cannes and eventually deposits you right in the middle of Grenoble, 200 miles inland.

As you leave Grasse the N85 opens out and climbs slowly over the next 10 miles until eventually it plateaus and you can see it meander over the horizon like a huge long line of grey string. Perfect Murcielago territory.

For a while I did my best to follow the Lamborghini, mesmerised by its vast rear tyres interacting so smoothly with the tarmac, happy to listen to the noises of that big V 12 ricochet off the cliff faces and obliterate the characterless thrumming of the Ford's 2.0-litre turbocharged four.

The RS had so much grip and raw composure over this road, I knew I could try harder than Harris in the Lambo, which meant I could stay with him to begin with. But as his confidence in the big car grew and as the straights got longer and wider, he was soon gone in an eruption of horsepower.

It was fantastic to watch, never more so than on the exit of one particular corner that was damp on the exit because the sun hadn't yet got to the surface. I could see the tail start to go and hear the engine revs rise as the rear tyres began to smoke up. Then I realised he wasn't about to go off the road in a dramatic and expensive accident: he was doing it deliberately, provoking the Murcielago into one of the most outrageous power slides I've ever seen on the public highway.

Imagine doing that in a Diablo: you'd be into the rock face and on the phone to the Samaritans before you could say, "Sorry, a rabbit jumped out in front of me." With the Murcielago, though, the balance is there if you're skilled enough to exploit it.

But the RS got its own back over the narrower, twistier roads we drove over later to get back to the autoroute. Then, the Ford's laser-crisp turn in, its powerful brakes and smaller girth meant it could at least stay with the Lambo, and in reality probably leave it, had I been able to get past.

When we stopped and swapped at the end of our favourite road, it was the Lambo's brakes that were puffing clouds of smoke under the strain: the Ford just sat there, ticking over quietly as if it had been driven to the supermarket.

For the journey along the bottom of France and across to northern Spain I at last got to settle into the big orange car I'd been watching all day. You don't so much climb aboard as insert yourself into a Murcielago, and if the process takes a little longer than it does in the Ford, which you simply leap into and go, then so be it: all the more time to think about, savour and anticipate the experience you're about to have.

The driving position may be much better than a Diablo's, but after the RS the Murcielago feels - at first - hopelessly compromised. The Ford is utterly conventional in layout: it could be any which car inside. Whereas the Murcielago could only be a Lamborghini - all knees up, arms out, feet cranked in towards the centre of the car to find the pedals.

The Murcielago's seat also feels hard and, basically, pretty uncomfortable after the Ford's. And yet, as the first autoroute mile towards our overnight destination of San Sebastian became the second, and then the 10th, and then the 20th, I started to make myself fit the Murcielago. Or to be more precise, I began to make it fit me.

To prevent ankle meltdown I hooked my left foot under and behind the clutch pedal, releasing as much toe-wiggling room as possible - occasionally this could be tempered by short bursts of placing my left foot on the accelerator and wiggling my right ankle to make sure all five pinkies were still present and correct.

The backrest I set to around 78 degrees, enabling right forearm to rest on right knee so I could steer with a nonchalant flick of the wrist whenever a more serious curve was encountered. I also tried resting my head on the back of the seat for a while to prevent neck disintegration but, in the end, I gave up. The vibrations set up a) by the seat flexing and h) by the faint pitter-patter of the suspension, were together just irritating enough to make me have to lift my head away from the seatback. If I didn't do this I ended up feeling, if not actually looking, like the nodding dog. Even so, by the time we reached San Sebastian some five hours, 550 miles and 261 litres of super unleaded later, I was still feeling surprisingly chipper.

SUTCLIFFE: DAY 4 SPAIN, RAIN AND A LITTLE OVERNIGHT PAIN

Why Spain, you might be wondering. One reason: to drive both cars flat chat over one of the quietest and best dual carriageways in the world, the autovia 68 that runs south from Bilbao to Burgos and, eventually, to Madrid.

It's the sort of road that makes your eyes weep and your head wonder exactly what it is they put in the water in the Basque region: it's a motorway, yes, but not as we know it. It's so twisty and mountainous you'd need a Group C Le Mans car to do more than 130mph at any stage along the first 100 miles. And to begin with the Focus, not the Lamborghini, was king.

Because, for the first 60 miles it was chucking it down - and in the rain there isn't a thing the Lambo's horsepower or all wheel-drive hardware can do to match the Ford's knee-trembling chassis composure. At one point I pulled out a good mile advantage over Harris in the Murcielago, which he'd been pedalling as fast as possible for the conditions.

When we swapped cars I soon realised why. In the rain, around a series of 100-110mph downhill sweepers, the Lamborghini is not a nice car to drive: it is the closest thing I can think of, in fact, to a nervous breakdown on four wheels.

You drive it quickly in such conditions with your heart in your mouth, your bum cheeks permanently clenched and both hands welded to the wheel. And your eyes never blink. Concentration is something of a must if an appointment with a slab of wet, grey Armco is to be avoided.

So in the end I gave up. I simply could not stay with Harris, who just charged off into the distance through the spray. After one oh-no-please-not-here-not-now moment, I cut my losses and hoped I'd see them in the queue at the next toll.

The Lambo's frightening combination of turn-in understeer, followed by a sharp swing into neutrality mid-comer and then oversteer if you so much as think about backing away from the throttle, well, it defeated me in the end.

In the dry it would no doubt have been very different. I'm certain the Lambo's sheer level of grip would have destroyed the RS and allowed me to make much greater use of the right-hand pedal. But in the rain, no thanks.

Interest in a bright orange Murcielago was surprisingly sparse at the Spanish/French border later that day.

At 10am we'd been way down in the middle of Spain, not far from Madrid. Our destination that night was Paris: next day we were headed to Bottrop in Germany, and then eventually to the Nurburgring. Another long and thankless slog north on the autoroutes in other words. And I got the short straw: the Lamborghini.

After a while I got bored and began to count the number of inexplicably silly faults inside the Murcielago - like the ashtray that constantly flicks open because the spring that holds it shut isn't strong enough (one); the stereo that's useless at anything above 80mph (two); the left-foot rest that doesn't actually have enough room to accommodate your left foot (three, and easily my favourite, so make that four as well); absolutely nowhere to put a mobile phone (five) except in the doorbins which have no bottom edge to them, meaning your mobile falls out and smashes on the floor first time you open the door (six); no clock (seven).

The other annoying flaw with the Murcielago as a long-distance tool is the engine vibration that happens between 4300-5100rpm. In the UK, unless you're mad, it's not an issue because the speed range we're talking about is 120-135mph. But on a deserted motorway in the middle of France at 10pm it's the exact speedband you want to settle in. So the only solution is to sit above or below these parameters.

A nice comfy 138mph it was then. By the time we reached Paris it was that awkward time when you don't know whether to stop and find a hotel, or carry on and get another 100 miles nearer to where you want to be the next day.

We went for the latter option - and boy were we wrong. After the fourth hotel north of Paris turned out to be full, my sense of dread heightened and my sense of humour evaporated, along with any chance we had of getting somewhere to kip that night. By then it was one in the morning: we'd been on the road since 6am, done way over 1000 miles, most of which I'd spent in the wonderful but also increasingly uncomfortable Murcielago. And to cap it all we'd got separated from each other and my wallet was in the Focus. I began to contemplate the grim prospect of spending a night in a Lamborghini.

Then my mobile rang. It was the others. Harris reckoned he knew a hotel in Liege that had got him out of the doo-doos once before at three in the morning on his way to the Nurburgring. It was only another 140km away. They would see me there.

The only thing I remember about the journey was having to stop three times to walk around the car to stay awake. If I'd had a couple of matchsticks handy I'd have shoved them in my eyes to keep them open. To this day I think it's probably the most dangerous thing I've ever done in a Lamborghini.

SUTCLIFFE: DAY 5 MAXIMUM ATTACK ON A31

Or maybe not. Next morning on the derestricted A31 autobahn that runs north from Bottrop to Ochtrup we logged the Murcielago at over 200mph - and at one point during the run there was a now-or-never-moment where I probably made an even more stupid decision than I had the night before.

We had already tried to max the car on three previous runs, and each time the traffic had thwarted us. The brakes were starting to feel decidedly second best by then, too, following three big stops from close to 200mph. The A31, you see, is only a dual-carriageway.

And usually it's not this busy. So we waited. And waited. And eventually, just before lunch, the traffic began to fade.

We had to be at the Nurburgring later that afternoon so it was make or break time as far the story was concerned. Returning a Murcielago to Lamborghini after a week having not done a genuine 200mph in it just didn't seem like the right thing to do. So for one final try we set off from our chosen layby, Harris in the passenger seat with the timing gear, me at the wheel, both of us sweating a little through fear and frustration.

Big V12 thunder as I went up through the gears, and at 185mph it was beginning to look good: the horizon was still clear and the Murcielago had reached that point where it no longer piles on the acceleration but instead merely claws its way up the speed range. One nine five, one nine seven, fine: the car still felt amazingly stable at this speed, a truly impressive display of chassis and aerodynamic composure. In a Pagani you need two lanes at this sort of lick.

It wasn't until we crested the brow and saw the three trucks lumbering along or the inside lane that the sheer outrageousness of what we were doing struck home. According to the speedometer we were now travelling at 335km/h - well over 200mph - and yet neither of us knew for sure whether the trucks would wander or not, like the other cars had on our three failed attempts to establish a "that's it; that's all she'll do" maximum.

So I took the very selfish decision to keep my foot planted and, I'm glad to say, just at that moment there was a murmur of approval from Harris. And then, thank God, we were past the trucks and away onto a clear stretch of road where eventually the Lambo reached a digitally confirmed 206.2mph.

The drive to the Nurburgring seemed to take a long, long time after that. And the drive home in the Focus took even longer. Yet somehow I was glad to be back in the Ford, going home. Returning to a more normal, more comfortable, less exhausting pace of life.

What we did in those two cars over those roads was a once in a lifetime experience which I shall never forget. Least of all what we did in the Lamborghini on that road, passing those trucks at such at unbelievable speed.

But I couldn’t and wouldn’t have turned around and done it all again. I was shattered – and so were my colleagues. And so, it must be said, was the Lamborghini.

For a car like the RS to put 5000 miles under it tyres in one week is, in the end, small beer. A regular deal. But for a Lamborghini, even one that has been lovingly assembled under the guidance of Audi, it’s a mammoth task – as much as a year’s motoring crammed into six days.

And to be honest the car was just beginning to crumble beneath the strain. The brakes were gonners by the time we handed it back and the driver’s side window had packed up. As an owner you’d be looking at several thousand pounds worth of expensive major service to make it ship-shape again. And the Focus, well it might have needed a £75 oil change another 5000 miles down the line. Not bad considering its odo read 9387 miles by the time it went back to Ford.

And now, Chris Harris tells his side of the story...

HARRIS: DAY 1 COLLECT LAMBO AND DRIVE TO NICE

When weekends away from work are merely tolerated and weekdays gleefully anticipated you've either married the wrong woman or love your job. The latter reason explained my dysfunctional twitching during the two days before I nudged the heated seat button in our long-term Lexus at 3.30 one morning not long ago and headed for Stansted airport. The waiting had been agony.

To me, this was always going to be The Trip. The script was sensational; the cast beyond compare. The next week could only ever be a personal benchmark. And now we were underway. Snapper Tommy Salt and I were aboard the Ryanair redeye to Brescia, Italy, with a colossal bag of film and an itinerary bequeathed by the Gods; and despite the skipper's best efforts to bury the Airbus undercarriage in the runway, we landed on schedule.

After an espresso, we met European editor Peter Robinson, who arrived unusually late in his classic beard-and-loud-sweater combo and a sizzling orange Murcielago.

He leapt out, almost gagging on his own hyperbole about the new Lambo, then composed himself, ran me through the deal, before surrendering to another crescendo of infectious Robbo enthusiasm: "It's yours for the week mate. God, it's soooooo good". The man is a legend, and he wasn't wrong.

It was also brand new, run-in to 1000km and that very morning was treated to a fresh slug of oil. It was effectively going to be our home for the next week. Time's arrow was pointing towards Nice, so we kept the farewell brief, loaded the boot in the nose (surprisingly accommodating) and filled the cabin (unsurprisingly cramped) and plotted a course to France. Sutcliffe had already phoned to tell me that his Focus's turbo had contracted a rare allergy to French air. Like I said, this was always going to be The Trip.

HARRIS: DAY 2 MONACO AND THE N85

In Monaco I tried, and failed, not to look a tit pulling three-pointers in the Lambo. The weather was desperate, while Monaco, as ever, was the arm-pit of Europe, so we decided against spending anything more than an hour getting lost in its nightmare one-way system. No wonder they have to make the tax benefits so appealing: no one would think of living there otherwise.

In convoy with the Focus my mind was on other things anyway. We were heading for what I consider to be the finest road on earth, the never-endingly brilliant N85, or Route Napoleon.

Knowing what lay ahead made trudging out of Grasse almost unbearable, but with altitude came space and the chance to string some turns together. Very fast car the Murcielago: it bounded up to braking areas with so much energy you had to be on the top of your game, but the rewards repaid your concentration. For 20 miles I stropped on at pace, only to realise that the bloody Ford was refusing to disappear from my rear-view mirror. So I pushed harder, only to be punished with the same result: a mirror full of Focus. Could have sworn the thing was grinning, too, goading me to give it the slip it if I thought that was actually possible.

And eventually I did, but only after I'd done everything I could in one of the world's fastest cars. It set up the question that most needed answering: is the Focus near-as-dammit-to-Lambo rapid in 'The Real World', or was Sutcliffe just a bit clever on these roads? I suspected the answer was a little of both, which was confirmed when we hung a left towards Draguignan. I followed him, and his brake lights flickered before, during and on the exit of every single bend. *** was left-foot braking.

HARRIS: DAY 3 FOCUS TO SAN SEBASTIAN

'Transit van' was all I could think when we swapped and headed for the autoroute and a sizeable trek to San Sebastian right across France's underbelly. I was sitting so high, the gearlever was so low and the steering, well, just like a van's really.

It wasn't anything to worry about, but the switch from supercar to regular wheels amazed me. They were just so different. Three hundred clicks later, though, the seat felt just perfect, lightly squeezing my ample booty but not cutting circulation as so many bucket-type seats do on long trips. Using two days in the Lambo as a reference no doubt left my comfort-judgement powers shot to bits but, either way, both the boy Salt and I could yarn at an indicated 110mph, and the hi-fi kicked out an especially fine set of sounds. But the roads played into the RS's hands, they were lino-smooth and had few expansion joints.

Then, not for the last time, we lost Sutters. Poor chap got impatient with a peage queue and ended up heading for Bordeaux. We trucked on towards San Sebastian at a severely abated rate and wondered, as everyone surely does, just how long it takes for something to catch up, despite our pathetic 60mph cruise. Our re-connection will stay with me for a long time. I spotted the Lambo's gas discharge lamps in the distance and couldn't quite believe how quickly they were growing. He was gonna buzz us. I wanted to hear it better, so I wound the Ford's window down and poked a lug-hole out. I don't hear so good anymore: my ear drum was permanently damaged by a Murcielago. How cool is that?

HARRIS: DAY 4 FOCUS REIGNS IN THE RAIN

Two hours before sun-up, nosing around San Sebastian in a deluge of Amazonian proportions didn't show the Lambo in its best light. Frankly, I was terrified of the thing getting biffed.

You never make a sharp exit from an espresso break in the supercar, either. Someone always wants to peer into the cabin, look at the engine or just stand over the nose and point. Odd thing is, I never tire of such attention. Let's just put it down to spreading the word, to letting something as menial as a car brighten a few lives. And the Murcielago does just that: it is the most extreme representation of the supercar and everyone loves it.

This road was getting into my head. For half an hour we climbed out of the border country until finally it flattened out and the landscape suddenly shifted from bland arable to a prairie rockscape you've only ever seen in a western before. With the change, the traffic thinned, the rain stopped and we swapped again. Steve's urge to exercise the Lambo's instrument needles was catching. I spotted the changes by the exhaust note: the lot in third, through fourth and a sizeable dose of fifth before holding the speed in sixth was enough to leave the Focus hundreds of car-lengths behind in an instant.

What a piece of road. Two lanes wide, lovingly surfaced, free from clumsy alterations and delicately cambered to help you sustain speed though its delicious sweepers. It's the finest stretch of dual carriageway in the world and every car nut should get down here and remind themselves how much fun multi-lane work can be.

In the dry it needs massive power, though. Even a hot hatch that will nudge 150mph isn't man enough for the job. I like to think that this is the road every supercar designer pictures in their head when they pen a 200mph silhouette. Just give me a DVD of the two cars hammering along it, underscored by a soundtrack cut directly from the Murcielago's induction nostril: all on a permanent loop. Heaven.

It wasn't yet 2pm and we'd already nailed 350miles. Next stop, Paris.

Tommy's place was in the Focus, regardless of driver. He called the Lambo evil, couldn't wriggle into a comfortable position and found the whole experience a mite threatening. So he had a permanent lair in the RS, film spilling out of every bin, pocket and cubby, and he scrambled around the cabin shooting various Lambo angles, emitting the odd noise in appreciation of the dusk light pinging off its soiled bodywork. In fact, make that filthy bodywork. Both cars looked well-used by then, but with every extra micron of overall scum, the Lambo was looking increasingly magnificent.

Fatigue was beginning to set in as we rounded the Periferique and, excusing the pun, I'd had my fill of the RS's pathetic range at our 110mph-plus cruising speed. On the thrash north of Bordeaux it had been little more economical than the big orange fella: 14mpg to the Lambo's 10mpg - and that was just out of order. Still, another brim just completed, we headed north of Paris to Compiegne, and the promise of a supple, warm bed.

Fat chance. No room at any inn. Now Steve and I are in possession of a pair of the more fractious tempers around. So then we got angry, vented our respective spleens with a childish display of wheel-spinnage in some tiny village and headed back to the autoroute, with Salt silent next to me wondering why he'd agreed to spend a week with two idiots equipped with dangerously fast cars and a lot of growing up to do.

Chronic tiredness meant I didn't fully recall what happened next. I know it was gone midnight when we lost Steve, that it was past one when Tom tried to phone him for the eighth time, connected, listened and then put the mobile down with a significance only a snapper can muster. "It's bad," he said. "Stevie's gone feral; he's losing it man."

Crikey.

Quick decision was needed. Aim for Liege, it was in the right direction for tomorrow's autobahn frolics and I knew of a gaff that had sorted me a couple of times in similar situations. Tommy phoned Steve and told him the plan: the return grunt seemed to be in the affirmative, so we assumed he'd understood and pinned our ears back. We arrived, found a room, had a kebab delivered, ate, made friends again and, at long last, slept.

HARRIS: DAY 5 FUN AUF DER AUTOBAHN

The foulest urban myth of the past 30 years is undoubtedly the commonly, and wrongly, held belief that Germany is the place to drive fast. It most certainly isn't. After the immaculate, congestion-free roads of southern Europe, the grim industrial north of Germany came as a rude shock. We rose early and entered the Fatherland at Aachen, drifting with three solid lanes of 70mph traffic towards the best-kept secret in Germany: the A31.

We call it the Bottrop road - on account of it ending in Bottrop - but its real significance lies in its beginnings. This is a motorway that quite literally starts out of nothing: two lanes grow out of a field and then just plough south with no speed limit whatsoever. It's so well suited to big speeds that Brabus tests its loony-saloons here: enough said.

You have to trust the people you work with in this job: too much time is spent in situations that could end in tears if you don't. And I trust Sutcliffe. I trust him sideways at over 100mph in the wet at Castle Combe and flat-chat on any road. But I've never sat next to anyone at 200mph before, and now having done so, can honestly say that I have no intention of repeating the experience.

It wasn't the speed: I'd already completed three photo runs myself at an indicated 330km/h (a true 198mph) and been stunned by the Lambo's aerodynamic stability. It was, and it took time to realise this, the vibrations that made me giddy. At over 190mph the Murcielago's body structure succumbs to the insane frictional war that's being played out by its wheels, drivetrain and bodyshell: the whole thing just begins to oscillate. Then at a real 200mph the frequency changes and the whole car throbs its way to 206mph. And when you're driving the difference is, you have a wheel to stop yourself shaking.

Slow-moving lorries don't worry me. Sutters made a decision to pass them, and that’s what counts, because the key to safe, fast driving is being ferociously decisive. And he made the correct call. But deep down I knew we’d just honestly maxed one of the fastest cars in the world on a public road. It felt sublime.

No time for reflection, though: we I needed to get to the 'Ring before 4pm. Oh, and the Focus did 146mph - not that you actually care.

Familiarity never quells the trepidation you feel as the barrier swings up and another lap of the Nordschleife begins. It is the defeinitive test of a car and driver: a circuit that tells us that, up to a point, agility is more vital than horsepower.

In the end, though, there was not a lot the RS could do to compete with the Lambo's sheer wallop. Whatever the Focus made up under brakes or in supreme body control, the Lambo was easily the faster and more thrilling drive. The final times? Lambo 7min 43.2sec, Focus 8min 34.1sec. The numbers really do say it all in this instance.

HARRIS: DAY 6 LAMBO GOES HOME

Lambo and Tommy were reunited through necessity rather than choice, because we were returning the once new and now thoroughly used Murcielago to Italy. We caught a steak at the Pisten Clausen bar near the 'Ring after our laps, and headed for Munich and the best night's sleep all week.

The pressure was off now. Steve would be half-way home already: we simply needed to carve a course through the Alps and saunter south-west towards Brescia to reunite Robbo with the Lamborghini.

And wouldn't you just know it, as we marvelled at the Brenna Pass and kept the speed below 100mph, a BMW 330i decided it wanted a piece of Italian flesh and so began another high-speed convoy. He was two-up, courteous and fun, and before we knew it, the Brescia exit loomed large on the right-hand side. Game over. Mixed emotions for me: sad to end the dream trip, ecstatic for Lamborghini that its car managed something of this magnitude while subliminally aware that I'd never do anything like it again.

Yet I missed the Ford, too, the car I'd taken to calling my Focus RS. You see I'm a sucker for this kind of tackle, always have been, always will be. I love the size/performance ratio: the anywhere, anytime, anyhow-ness of the package. It makes me feel special when I know I'm not, and that's a prodigious achievement for something with a sticker-price less than one-eighth of what you'll need to buy the lower-slung half of this pairing.

Robbo completed the circle, naturally. We dropped the car at his home in Brescia and he left for Sant' Agata soon afterwards. This time he said nothing, aware that I was genuinely sad to be saying goodbye to the car, but his smile said it all. What a car, what a trip.

Halfway around the world in a week

The Autocar Archivist — Wed, 17 Mar 1993 00:00:16 GMT

How many miles do you think you could put on a car in a week? Well, back in 1993 - as Autocar writers James Thomas, Allan Muir, Peter McSean, Peter Robinson, Gavin Conway, Michael Harvey and Steve Sutcliffe found out - the answer was 12,000. Just.

Their mission was to take the brand new Ford Mondeo on a non-stop, tag-team grand tour of Europe that would take in as many countries as you could count. By the end of it, as the plan went, the car would have driven the equivalent of a round trip to Tokyo, and covered the kind of mileage that most owners would take a year to rack up. But would it survive the trip? Read on to find out.

Halfway around the world in a week

Contents: introduction; day one - Calais to The Rock in 20 hours; day two - back to Calais the twisty way; day three - ten countries in 24 hours; day four - heading for Italy's heel; day five - a fine time for a fuel strike; day six - it all starts to go wrong; day seven - 2326 miles in a day.

Introduction

Get in your car, make yourself comfortable, start it up and then drive to Tokyo. How long will that take you? A month, a couple of months. What if you drove there and back, how long then? Chances are you’d miss the kids’ summer holidays, yes?

No. In February, steered by a team of 12 Autocar & Motor drivers, a 1.6-litre Ford Mondeo LX clocked up 12,000 miles – that’s Tokyo and back and more – in precisely one week. It was, without any shadow of a doubt, the hardest test we’ve ever put a car through. Driving halfway around the world in a week is an achievement in itself. We had bloody good fun doing it (as you’ll read) and the difference between success and failure came down to one petrol stop.

But that was not the reason we did it. We wanted to know how an entry-level Mondeo stood up to what is probably the toughest test ever to appear in a car magazine.

We haven’t felt the need to do this sort of a test before. But two days in the south of France back in January convinced us that the Mondeo is a car of exceptional composure, refinement and sheer mile-destroying competence. And while two days were enough to tell us the car was head and shoulders above its rivals, it was clear it had not showed us all its tricks.

Ford says Mondeos won’t just be reps’ cars; they certainly deserve more. Nonetheless, we’re pretty sure they’ll quickly find their way to the top of the wish-lists of the nation’s high-milers. Even if you find those guys a pain in the butt, you can’t deny that their day-long ton-up grind does teach them a thing or two. If you can’t beat them…

But we didn’t just want to telescope a year’s repping into seven days. Clocking up that sort of mileage, and doing it in the manner in which we did, puts us in a unique position: nobody outside Ford knows that car better than we do now. You won’t find a better informed judgement. A car like the Mondeo deserves nothing less.

So belt up, and don’t forget the passport.

Day one: Calais to The Rock in 20 hours, by James Thomas

“It’s 1600 miles to Gibraltar, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it.”

This is leg number one, 8pm at Calais. Thomas at the wheel, Muir co-driving and Sutcliffe trying to get some shuteye on the backseat. Not a chance. We’re all incredibly fired up for this truncated European tour, the A26 out of Calais is reasonably light with traffic, REM are playing on the CD and we’ve got a brand new Mondeo 1.6 LX that’s fresh off the line at Genk and just gagging for miles.

But 10 miles out of Calais the fog’s denser than anything horror writer James Herbert could dream up, guaranteeing a white-knuckle drive for all. Probably as a diversion, Muir is busy entering the first set of notes in the pad we’ve brought along to record the finer moments of this jaunt.

Here’s a flavour: “Saturday 1.00am, fill up with gas. Only the super unleaded (read super expensive) pumps are in use; coachloads of French school kids wearing appalling tracksuits are everywhere.”

We head off into the early morning having completed a fuel stop that would impress the Newman/Haas team. Muir has taken the wheel and we’re on the A26/E17 Lyon bound. We hit the city limits at the lowest ebb in the traffic flow because the whole town is dispatched in what seems like a matter of minutes. By the time I look up again, the huge Elf petroleum works are fast disappearing in the rearview mirror. Time to catch some zees.

Blimey; it’s 4.45am. Sutcliffe has his clog down, Montpellier’s gone and we’re on the A9 to Barcelona, well on the way to Gibraltar. We hit the Spanish border at 6am and some impromptu maths says there’s time for some breakfast and a cursory look at the myriad of gonks you can buy in Spanish service stations.

We eat, I drive, the major towns falling to our unyielding right feet in relentless fashion. Valencia bites the dust at 10.05am; at 11.00am Benidorm passes to shouts of “Ere we go!”; then we dice with a black BMW 3-series coupe through Malaga.

Saturday 6pm, and we’ve made it to The Rock in 20 hours having covered roughly 1600 miles – just 13 per cent of the whole marathon completed.

Day two: back to Calais the twisty way, by Allan Muir

To prove that we had got as far south as we could without the need for a snorkel, we decided to nip into Gibraltar to get our passports stamped. Told that it had to be done on the way out, we drove through the border figuring that we could do a quick U-turn and be off. But we hadn’t banked on the officious policeman who told us that we had to go to the back of an unbelievably long queue.

Sutcliffe leapt out of the car and had a blazing row with the intransigent bobby, who made us drive through the town to the back of the queue, which is where we sat, fuming, for an hour and a half. What a waste of time. To make matters worse, the border officials refused to stamp our passports, so it was all in vain.

Vowing that we would never return to Gibraltar but knowing that we had some time in hand, we treating ourselves to a well-earned meal in Marbella. But I was beginning to feel ill. Soon after we started retracing our steps towards Calais, I was forced to ask Sutcliffe to stop the car. All I could do was hang my head out of the door…

While I was recovering on the back seat, Thomas put in a dramatic piece of driving on the twisty road over the mountains towards Murcia. It was dark and it was raining. Sutcliffe, nodding off in the co-driver’s seat, kept waking with a start to see right-angle corners looming very fast. I became aware of our pace when I started sliding from side to side on the back seat, cracking my head on the door around every left-hander.

By the time we reached the next fuel stop I was feeling much better, so I took the wheel for a stint that took us rapidly up the east coast of Spain through the early hours of Sunday morning. After a quick breakfast stop near Barcelona, Calais didn’t seem so far away.

The roads had all been amazingly quiet for a half-term weekend and we were comfortably ahead of schedule, so by the time we got to Reims we didn’t feel too guilty about making a burger run. We all felt self-conscious about our appearance – young children ran for cover in the restaurant.

By the time we got back to Calais for the change-over, 49-hours after we started, the Mondeo had covered 3207 miles. Remarkably, we all said we would happily do it all over again…

Day three: ten countries in 24 hours, by Peter McSean

Remember the ‘60s film about a coachload of tourists on a whistle-stop tour of Europe called If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium? Prepare to read the abridged version: 10 countries in a day, or If it’s 11pm, this must be Belgium.

I’d always thought it was possible – given the right car. But is the car Gavin Conway and I are about to be given by Muir and co, a 1.6-litre Mondeo, the right car? Among the thousand things racing through my mind, as I sit apprehensively at the table nearest the door in the Calais terminal café, that is one.

Our mission is essentially simple. Be at Peter and Erica Robinson’s front gates in northern Italy at 23.30 on Monday having covered 1500 miles. If Gavin and I fail through no fault of our own, then back luck. If we fail because our escapade is too ambitious, we’ll be shot.

I finish my last coffee until Italy, take the keys from a jubilant Muir and pray for good luck. One huge traffic jam, a wrong turn or bad fog and… we’d might as well shoot ourselves and save everyone else the bother.

We drive the 200 metres to passport control, where a bored Monsieur Duanier eventually chistens a pristine page on my passport. Our stamp collection has begun. Time 21.30.

Belgium is the next target but in our excitement we miss the autoroute out of Calais and head down the painfully slow road to Dunkirk. Then miss the autoroute there, too. “U-turn and follow that lorry!” By the time we hit the peage we are already behind schedule.

Which is probably all right except wisps of fog start to dance over the heated front screen. We drop to 50mph, then 40mph and at times below 30mph. Forget the schedule for now. Forget, too, that this is one hell of a way for two grown men to spend St Valentine’s night.

Out of the mist appears the Belgian border. Stamp number two, 23.15. Now the thick fog turns into the freezing stuff. We’re glad the roads are empty – we don’t want to find out how many cars you can fit in the boot of a Mondeo. Suddenly our turn off to Maastricht (a must on a frontier-crossing marathon) catches us napping and we see it disappear behind us. We are forced to enter Holland via Germany.

German border, 01.00, Monday. No one to stamp our passports. We continue into Aachen – “What are we doing in Aachen?” – where we get heroically lost.

Forty-five minutes later and I start to wonder where I packed the revolver. Does Maastricht really exist outside of political rhetoric?

We never discover, but suddenly find ourselves at a Dutch border, 01.50. Cross German border 02.00 and add to the stamp collection.

03.30 and disaster. Luxembourg, it seems, is closed. No one anywhere at or even near the border. Waste time looking then have to be content with a photo as proof.

Germany remains a delightful, liberating 110mph memory, with a sight-seeing trip close to an indicated 125mph. Our schedule now looks do-able.

Austria passes by at 10.30, Switzerland at 11.30, and, at 12.00 we arrive in Liechtenstein. It’s truly High Noon, too, for the border guard doesn’t want to play ball. In a heated discussion I nearly get the back of my hand stamped… Finally the good guys win and ride out of town.

The glorious, snow-lined Brenner Pass corkscrews us to Italy, 14.30, and we are on schedule for the first time since… ever.

Before long we erroneously enter Verona town centre. And can’t find out way out. Something flies out the window – it’s the schedule.

Finally the g-force from the ever decreasing circle flings us clear and we hightail it down to our last and most exciting border – Slovenia. Tension pervades the air and car searches are going on, so we leave the car on the Italian side and cross the border on foot. Stamped at 19.00, we leave quickly and gratefully.

Then it sinks in. We’ve done it. Ten countries in 22 hours! A fabulous 10 – the perfect score for our cartographic gymnastics. Elation sweeps over us in a big way.

And again when we hand the car over to Team Robinson at 23.45 with 1604 miles on the trip.

Day four: heading for Italy's heel, by Peter Robinson

We swap house keys for car keys and set off towards the sunrise. We’ll drive east to Padua, and then south down the coast as far into Italy’s heel as the autostrada goes. Taranto, here we come.

The so-familiar landscape is eerily different – spotlit churches and walled castles a gilded pattern in the velvety blackness.

Graceland is playing: my travelling companion is 49 years old. She’s the wife of my second marriage…

Companion? She’s already asleep.

Ferrara, Bologna. Soon Faenza. Modena? I’ve turned west instead of south-east. A U-turn at Modena Sud and we’re back on track. Bologna again. Faenza, Forli. That’s better.

First stop for fuel and coffee and 299 miles. We swap seats. Rain, snow and a diversion to the wrong side of the autostrada slow us down. I sleep.

We swap again. Sunrise, over a chilly and flat Adriatic.

Taranto, nine hours and 669 miles behind us. We stop for fuel and photographs between naval and fishing fleets. A cold wind blows. Who’d be a fisherman?

We double back to meet the autostrada that heads west across the Appennines to Naples. More snow and slippery roads before the west coast and tentative sunshine.

It’s a de Chirico tour – glimpses of history contrast with the ever-present autostrada. King of the road? The road is king.

Past Rome, up the beauteous Tiber valley towards Florence. Orvieto tops a hill on our left, signs promise us Perugia, Assisi, Siena. Another time.

South of Florence trucks belch fumes, sway across lanes, overtake without signals. We turn east to Lucca, they continue north. Through the Appennines again. Then north to La Spezia and east to Parma. The Appennines for the third time…

Here bodyclock logic says to turn for home, an hour away on the map. But we’ve only done 18 hours and 1320 miles. So we swing north-west again around Turin and up to Ivrea, then south again.

At last, the odo and the dashboard clock agree – we can head for home. We come in the gate just after 23.30, our contribution stops at 1737.8 miles. We then rush into the kitchen for a funnel and… well, that’s where Gavin picks up the story.

Day five: a fine time for a fuel strike, by Gavin Conway

It looks like the Italians are about to get even in a very big way. No good apologising now for the rude things we’ve written about the switchgear on Italian cars, the petrol strike is going ahead at 10pm. A petrol strike. Not good when we could be facing more Italian miles than a tank of unleaded can handle.

It’s 23.30 and we are taking over the Mondeo, greeting Team Robinson with a spare fuel tank filled before the strike.

After brimming the Mondeo’s tank and my tasselled loafers – they will accept unleaded as well as four star – we head west into a cool Italian night with Chip, aka Peter McSean and my co-driver, skilfully bossing the Mondeo along. I’m beginning to resent Chip’s macho leather driving gloves, as I have no convincing ‘road warrior’ gear at all.

We are now cruising fashionably on the A26 southbound and the petrol strike has yielded a fabulous benefit – we are on a glass-smooth motorway and there is absolutely no traffic. I wonder if the damn thing is closed? Chip is in petrol-head heaven and isn’t wasting any time at all, no siree.

Romantic sounding place names like Alessandria are dissolving quickly into the past and I reckon if we don’t get lost our fuel load will get us to the south of France.

At Genoa, we get lost.

A stupidly simple matter of going left instead of right and now I’m really worried. The good and noble Chip is coasting the Mondeo down hills.

It looks like we are back on course and heading west out of Genoa – the road is a fantastic series of orange phosphorescent-lit mountain tunnels that make me feel like I’m inside a video game.

I’m feeling better about the fuel level now, saying movie-grade things like “Well Chip O’Lata, looks like we’ll make the Franco/Italian border after all.”

We are across the border and driving into a muddy dawn, running late because of another bloody missed turn performed by a gloveless driver. Chip takes over and gorgeous swathes of France dotted with lumps of history are disappearing into our logbook. The only cop we’ve seen looks silly and impotent driving a Renault R4.

After losing the toss with a Toulouse toll-taker over what constitutes change from a 500-franc note, we point the Mondeo towards Calais and our rendezvous with the next team. It’s dark now and the rain is coming down and the romantic adventure of our marathon has me talking like Gary Cooper: “Well Chip, looks like we’ll get this rig to Calais after all…”

Then, as with all truly great movies, it ends too soon.

Day six: it all starts to go wrong, by Michael Harvey

This wasn’t a pace-setting opener, nor a garlands and glory anchor leg. Just grab the car, take the mileage over 10,000 and get it to the anchormen on time. Shouldn’t be difficult.

Problems. I turn up at Dover without my passport, which is in London, an hour and a half away at best. Timetables tell us we’re going to be at least two hours late, and there’s no way of getting in touch with K23 FMC. (We’re unaware that on the other side of the channel McSean and Conway are still en route back from Calino in Italy). Contemplating as many as 300 lost miles, the Eastern Docks feel like a graveyard.

We make the meet in Calais in the early hours, having to truncate a 2000-mile leg to Bologna to a 1500-mile round trip to Nice. Fog, rain and fuel stops knock 10mph off our terminal velocity, but we still manage extremely good averages in our first four hours as we head towards sunrise and Lyon. If we drop the pace, though, we won’t get through it before the rush.

A long fuel stop means we add only 55-miles in our fifth hour. As Lyon gets closer, there’s silence in the Mondeo – the possibility of us blowing it altogether dawns.

But we make it, and some good mileage after sun-up gets us to Nice by 09.45, 748 miles and eight and a half hours after Calais. Two espressos later we head back, anticipating problems with a force six mistral south of Lyon. Sure enough, we struggle to make a ton and the Mondeo shows the first *** in its armour; it isn’t entirely wind-proof.

A rickety old police 305 estate delays us further. We’re not alone. A poor Ferrari F40 driver is playing tag with the gendarmes. Then he gives up and dives into a petrol station to cool off, and gets a good look at the French Red Arrows who are practising overhead.

The mistral fades north of Lyon and we string together some serious mile-crunching hours, reaching Calais 20 minutes early, 1504 miles after leaving. Not a bad distance for 19 hours, but way short of what I’d hoped. There’s no sign of our team so we make what turns out to be a crucial decision; we fill up with gas, giving the guys the best possible chance, but I think it’s a way-outside one. The hand-over makes McLaren look slow. If anyone’s going to do this, these guys are.

Day seven: 2326 miles in a day, by Steve Sutcliffe

Nice Mr Editor Harvey hands us the keys with a vaguely forlorn look on his face and says: “Sorry boys but we’ve blown it. It’s out of the question.”

We climb inside the Mondeo’s used-smelling cabin, check the time and the odometer – 8.04pm, 10,328 miles – and wonder. The road test editor and co-pilot Frankel turns to me and sighs the eternal words, “You do realise this is impossible.”

The deal, if there is anything remaining that can be referred to as a deal, is this. In the next 23 hours 56 minutes, in order to achieve the desired 12,000-mile mark, the three of us (we took a third driver) will have to cover 2326 miles, a distance roughly approximate to travelling between London and Newcastle nine times. I have a girlfriend who goes to university in Newcastle and on a Friday night on a good run it takes about five and a half hours. Times nine equals 50 hours. Hmmm…

But what the hell. We can’t just give up now. We at least have to give it a shot.

And so begins the most extraordinary 23 hours and 56 minutes I have ever spent inside a car.

It doesn’t kick off at all well, either. Two hours and a couple of hundred miles further south our science, so precise before we’d set off, comes to a juddering halt at the side of the autoroute between Reims and Dijon. Ashamed as I am to say it, we had run clean out of petrol. Thank God I’d stashed a spare gallon in the boot the previous Sunday night.

Taking note that when the fuel gauge is reading a quarter full it actually means there is about a gallon, certainly no more than two, left in the tank, we continue. Flat out, apart from fuel stops and peages, through the entire night. Past Dijon, through Lyon and its never-ending road-works, down to Montpellier and then back up towards Toulouse and Bordeaux. At a quarter past eleven the Mondeo, 20 hours 44 minutes ahead of schedule, breaks the original 10,000-mile barrier. But with the 12,000-mile target in mind, we’re almost too busy to notice.

Daybreak. We’re through Bordeaux and, having got as far north as Orleans, we’re heading back towards Clermont Ferrand and Lyon. Our average speed after 17 hours is higher than it needs to be. It has been an entertaining and occasionally and involving evening’s driving.

Realistically, the one thing that can prevent us now is Lyon; busy, smelly old Lyon. That or ‘The Feds’ who have been conspicuous by their absence during the night but are bound to be waiting somewhere for us in the daylight. Fortunately the one time they are, just before the peage at Reims, we have been warned by a stream of cars flashing their headlights. Now why don’t they do that in this country?

An entry from the diary with four hours to go: “We must average 89mph, feeling numb but buzzing with adrenaline. Car is still fantastic. Anyone trading a Sierra in for this thing just isn’t going to believe their luck.”

One hour to go and another 88 miles must pass beneath the Mondeo’s wheels. But we need fuel and there is the peage at Calais to negotiate. We fuel up, looking more like escapees from the local nut house than respectable motoring writer type of people, pay the nice lady in the booth and weld the pedal to the floorboards.

We arrive at Calais but there are too few miles on the clock. So we drive into the terminal car park and, much to the bemusement of the onlookers silently waiting to catch the next ferry, turn round in a cloud of smoke to head straight back in the direction we’re just come from – 40 miles and 22 minutes left. At the peage (which I have been through 10 times in the past seven days) we turn around again and head back for Calais but realise we’re misjudged the distance for the second time. By Calais there will be only 11,992 miles on the clock. So we take the autoroute towards Boulogne and hope it doesn’t run out on us.

And it doesn’t. It sounds painfully corny but as the end of the autoroute sign looms into view the ‘3’ of 12,653 becomes a ‘4’ and our 12,000-mile marathon is over. The Mondeo’s digital clock, I’m not joking, is reading 7.58pm. After 168 hours’ non-stop running, we have made it with a little over 90 seconds to spare. The final three words in the car’s diary are, quite simply, “told you so.”

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