An adventure with Lucy Blu

In June 2003, I made the momentous and seemingly insane decision to buy a brand new MINI Cooper S. This seemed insane to me because I had recently paid off my nice 1997 “cashmere beige” Toyota Camry, which was a sensible, reliable car, and I was really enjoying all the extra cash I had since I no longer had a car payment. Paying off my credit cards, putting money into mutual funds … I was living the high life. I also very sensibly believed that I would never waste money on a new car, let alone one that was just starting production.

Lucy with her shades on, and Hawaii flag on sunroof

But … in late 2002 I started seeing these adorable little cars running around the island of Oahu, where I lived at the time, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They were the new MINI Coopers, and they filled my eyes and tugged at my heart like a little glimpse of fun car heaven. After several months of war between common sense and a desire I didn’t even really understand, I logged onto the MINIUSA website, and started doing some serious research. I picked out the colors and the features that I wanted, and headed down to the dealership, determined to get only what I wanted, and to get my money’s worth. I even took a male friend with me for moral support and so I would be taken more seriously by those slippery car salesmen.

This great plan went almost straight out the window. Getting exactly what I wanted would take six months at least, because the car would have to be ordered from the factory in England, and I wanted a MINI Cooper NOW. So I did something even more crazy … I picked a car available on the lot, loaded with a ton of features, about half of which I didn’t want, and I paid MSRP for all of it – $27,000. It amazes me even now when I think about it, that I did all this. I realize now that some part of me knew it would be worth it.

Lucy is so much fun to drive! Street driving felt grossly inadequate, once I started to understand what Lucy could do, especially on corners. I joined the BMW Car Club of Hawaii (BMW is the parent company of MINI) and took some BMW driving courses, raced in a few autocrosses, met a lot of great people, and for the first time in my many years in Hawaii, really started enjoying myself. What a ride!

Lucy after her 2 laps on the Nurburgring, June 2005

I transferred to England in October 2004, and took Lucy with me. I drove Lucy in several parts of England, including Wales, Scotland, the Shetland and Orkney islands, and the Cotswolds. I also took part in a road rally with several English MINI Cooper owners and some guy with a Porsche 911 – we rode a train through the Chunnel and drove through France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Monaco, all in a week’s time.

Some of the most exciting and stressful driving was through the Alps. What follows is my description of driving through the Alps, and particularly Passo Dello Stelvio, a mountain road over a 9,000 foot pass through the Italian Alps that has been described as one of the most dangerous roads in the world.

I didn’t get enough sleep the night before driving the Alps. And I am afraid of heights. So I spent the whole day driving over Swiss and Italian mountain passes – Grimsel, Furka, and others I don’t recall – in a state of fear, which was aggravated by sleep deprivation and the altitude headache I had awoken with that morning in Interlaken, Switzerland. This was by far the most challenging and exciting day of driving during our entire trip, but I was not driven by enthusiasm; rather, I simply pressed forward with a grim determination to just get it over with. Every succeeding mountain pass that day presented me with a greater endurance challenge, both physical and psychological. I simply felt I could do no more by 10:00 p.m., when we finished our 45 minute ascent of Italy’s infamous Stelvio Pass – 45 minutes of driving up, up, up, constantly switching between first and second gear through an endless series of hairpin turns and occasional patches of thick white clouds, in a deepening twilight on unlit narrow mountain roads, and we still had a descent of unknown length to drive on the other side before reaching the relative safety of an Italian motorway.

Stelvio Pass is not for the faint of heart, or the ill-prepared. It is not for people with suicidal tendencies, or even low self-esteem. It is not for people driving cars with bad brakes or no power steering. It is not for people, like me that night, who are too tired to see straight, or who didn’t get enough sleep the night before. And most of all, it is not for people who are afraid of heights! Every hairpin turn presents the driver with another aspect of the infinite abyss, sheer mountainsides and distant snow-covered crags, and the sure knowledge that a mistake would likely be spectacularly fatal. The bollards on the side of the road are there to show a driver where the cliff edge is, not to keep them from falling down the mountain if their hands slip off the wheel or their foot off the brake pedal. No room exists on those narrow roads for such a reassuring safety feature as an adequate crash barrier. There is virtually no room for error. The width of these mountain roads, while technically wide enough for two cars, usually appears about one-and-a-half cars wide, which makes passing by an oncoming car or tour bus a heart-stopping experience, even in a MINI.

The dark side of Passo dello Stelvio (well, it was dark when I drove it!)

Standing at the top of Stelvio after the eternal nerve-wracking ascent, where the temperature was in the mid-30s F (50 degrees colder than the warm June air we had left behind several thousand feet below) I shivered with cold and exhaustion and an overwhelming dread of the descent. The handful of hotels and restaurants at the top of the pass, with their garish neon signs and warm reassurance of human presence and shelter, seemed jarringly out of place in such a cold, remote area (and how on earth did they get all that construction material up there to build hotels and restaurants? And keep them supplied? Surely not via those terrifying roads!). Everyone else in my group took pictures and talked enthusiastically about how much fun the ascent had been. I desperately and irrationally wished I wouldn’t have to drive down the mountain, and entertained the thought of checking into one of the hotels. I was almost paralyzed with fear. I knew that staying would only delay the inevitable, though; I had to get myself and Lucy off this mountain, and I knew I was the only one who could do it. I had to almost literally push myself out of my state of paralysis, to get in my car and prepare to drive it down that terrifying mountain. After waiting what felt like forever (15-20 minutes), everyone else finally got back in their cars, switched on their headlights … and we all drove down the dark side of the mountain.

The descent, which took about 45 minutes, was frightening, but fortunately somewhat less so than the ascent. We again spun around and around the endless hairpin turns, catching brief glimpses of the abyss, which now was merely a vast yawning blackness – still disturbing, but somewhat less distracting than catching brief dizzying glimpses of far off mountainsides. I spent most of the drive down switching between second and third gears (second for the turns, third for the occasional almost-long straightaway). We met no other cars until well past the last hairpin turn, when we reached some decent, respectable roads that were not hanging off the side of a cliff. The air thickened and warmed, and my altitude headache finally went away. Even via the respectable roads, though, and moving at a good pace, Bolzano was still over an hour’s drive after the end of Stelvio; we didn’t reach our hotel until 12:30 a.m. It was one of the most opulent hotels we stayed in during the entire trip, and the one in which we spent the least time.

I must tell you here – in spite of my fear, one thing I never worried about was Lucy. I never doubted for a moment that she could handle the mountain driving – the altitude and the innumerable 180 degree turns and the steep grades – with ease. It is this sort of driving that MINIs are obviously made for, which becomes apparent after only a few minutes of demanding driving. It’s as if the BMW engineers put four wheels and an engine on a mountain goat. This was my one source of comfort all throughout that long extremely demanding day, and it was why I fell in love with Lucy all over again. She is simply an amazing car. To go from the demands of the Nurburgring and the autobahn one day, to the extremes of mountain driving the next, and to do it all with the same purr in her engine and muscular, precise handling was proof enough that I own a really cool car.

Looking down the mountain

2 Comments

• 

  By Tim F., September 30, 2009 @ 4:22 am

  Angel,

  On the right roads Lucy Blu must be adrenaline in a can.

  Twenty years ago when you were without wheels, I remember giving you rides to some of your off campus destinations in my slow but corner loving ’81 Jetta. And, I never would have imagined that one day you would be doing autocross on white knuckle roads. Keep it rolling. I really enjoyed the story.

• 

  By Angel, September 30, 2009 @ 6:24 pm

  Wow, blast from the past! Hi Tim! I’m glad you mentioned the Jetta, because I didn’t remember your last name and I’m not sure I would have figured out who you were. However, for the last 20 years, whenever I hear someone mention a Jetta, I think of you. So I knew who you were right away.

  And like you, 20 years ago I never would have imagined owning a nimble little sports car and driving across the Alps with it. I’ve always had a lead foot but I never would have guessed I’d be interested in a sporty car.

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