Ultimate Challenger Road Trip - Part 1
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Yes, this is a Dodge Challenge SRT8. And yes
we’re in the center of London, England. We are here at the beginning of a great adventure
of the next 10 days or so. We are going to be driving this car across Europe and we want
you to come along for the ride.
We head out through the London traffic. Our first stop, Brooklands, once home to British
Auto Racing. You might think that the guys at NASCAR invented the banked racing
tracks but you would be wrong. We are here at Brooklands and this track was built in
1907, it’s the world first purpose-built auto racing track. Brooklands was the heart of
British motor racing from 1907 to 1939. So why do we bring the Challenger here? Well
there is a Chrysler connection. One of the stars here of Brooklands was guy name of
Malcolm Campbell, now Malcolm Campbell race his Bluebird land speed record cars at
Daytona Beach in a Bonneville.
But he was also a pretty good driver on the track. And in 1925; he won a race right here
at the wheel of a Chrysler. We can’t linger though, we have train to catch under the
English Channel. We are here in England but we are about to enter into France, we are
coming to the entry point for the Channel Tunnel. You actually clear a passport to control
while still in England so there is a big sign up here “I am coming into France”. But those
yet, we are not off the island. Alright, we are driving on to the train in the Channel
Tunnel. It takes about 35 minutes to cross. And at short beats the old days when you use
to have to go by ferry which took hours. It is a very well organized system. It makes it
easy to get to France.
Let's see—which one they want us to. We’re getting waved through. Now you got to
maneuver into the train and it's not necessarily a wide fit. This is really weird. It is like
driving through your living room, the Challenger just fits this wide for this trains made by
the European guys, park, sitting in the car and enjoy the ride. Well it is day two and we
are here in Paris at six in the morning. Why up so early? Well back in 1976, a guy called
Claude Lelouch made a little film called “Rendez-vous” about a high-speed run through
the streets of Paris early in the morning.
So we got to try and trace the route and see how he did it. Let’s go. Now won’t get a full
of Lelouch’s route exactly. They changed the road since 1976. And there is a bit more
track than they used to be. Now here we go down the avenue towards to Arc de
Triomphe. It sounded like he was in a V12 Ferrari, sporting at 140 miles an hour to the
streets of Paris. In reality, he was driving a Mercedes Benz 450SCL 6.9 with a camera
mounted really low to accentuate the speed.
Now we are heading down the—should I say one of the most famous streets in the world
runs right through to the heart of Paris. In Lelouch’s time, you can go motortrend.com
and check out the video. This was empty. He was screaming down the street. Well, we
can’t follow the exact route, we get pretty close. And the bright orange Challenger is a
surprising hit with early rising Parisians. We are into the cobbled streets, tight, twisting,
narrow, traffic. Getting you the end, close to Sacre Coeur high above Paris and I am
driving through like he used to.
Well here we are at Sacre Coeur, a wonderful cathedral that overlooks the entire city of
Paris. We’re not going to get through the parking lot where Lelouch finished his film and
the girl ran up into his camera. But this is close enough. It has been an exhilarating drive
in the Challenger this morning. And we know traffic is on the roads. It is one of the best
ways to see this town.
After Paris, we head east to the old Grand Prix and Reims. The old pit garages, race
control and grandstand still lie in the road that served as a start finish straight. For years,
the old structure was simply left to crumble. The old advertising signs fading into the
bleach concrete, broken glass in the control tower. A local group has recently started to
repaint some of the structure.
It is not quite as eerie as it used to be but it is still a hugely atmospheric place, a wash
with ghosts of races past. It is day three of the Challenger Tour through Europe and we
are here in Stuttgart home of Mercedes Benz. Behind me is the brand new Mercedes
Benz Museum, a must for any visitor to this town. But we are going across the road to the
legendary Mercedes Benz work at the Unterturkheim. We are going there because we are
about to drive the Challenger in one of the most unique automotive test tracks anywhere
in the world.
Well, here we are at the aptly nine vertical track. There is no track like this at any
automotive ground anywhere in the world. Just look at that wall. It is vertical and we are
going to be driving around it in a Dodge Challenger just like that one. Well now it is time
to drive what they call the vertical track. It really is like doing the wall of death but if you
follow the procedure, it's very straightforward. So here we go. Take her up to about 50 to
55 miles an hour. We are pointing at this yellow line, just hold it steady and let gravity do
the work, physics do the work. It is amazing you can’t see where you are going. I am
following this yellow line and now we are coming out just like an aircraft coming out of
banking. I feel like Chuck Yeager, just gone through an aerobatic maneuver.
For the wheel, the sensations that you will ever experience in a car is certainly one of the
highlights of my driving career. The excitement of the vertical track over, we head a few
miles north of Stuttgart to the picturesque medieval village of—is full of beautifully
restored buildings, cobbled streets and tourists. It is the perfect venue for a lunch stop
while we contemplate our next task, finding out just how fast the Dodge Challenger will
go.
We are in the autobahn number seven heading south towards Austria. And we are just
waiting for the traffic to clear cruising at a 100 miles an hour. So—let’s go for it. Pedal to
the metal, it is a really long travel gas pedal; picking revs up 120 miles an hour. Well—
ripped by the weather and by the traffic, we wanted to see whether we could max out the
Challenger on Germany’s streets, autobahn. But there are too many cars and it started
raining and take it from me, you don’t want to be traveling in a 160 miles an hour—
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