Step on the gas, don’t feed the bears

Let’s just take this roadside sign with a laugh. Travellers are kindly asked not to feed the bears pizza. A joke? It isn’t.

For the road on which this sign stands is the Transfăgărășan, once blasted through the Carpathians under Nicolae Ceaușescu, the former president of the Socialist Republic of Romania – officially for military reasons, but in reality as a monument to a dictator who was afraid of his own people. Jeremy Clarkson, a man who shouts at cars when he likes them, declared it the best road in the world in 2009. Back then, he was driving something with a very large internal combustion engine. We’re driving something without one.

Our departure from Sibiu, that picture-perfect Transylvanian town with houses peering out from narrow roof hatches like suspicious neighbours, is unspectacular. The suspension is smooth, the bodywork hugs the road, the coffee was good. So far, so Gran Turismo. But the further we drive from the city, the more the smooth tarmac gives way to the real Romania: horse-drawn carts slowing down the traffic. Stray dogs commenting on it. Some lie relaxed by the side of the road; others give chase with a determination that makes a photographer think twice about whether that one atmospheric shot is worth the risk to their calves. Most of the time, it isn’t.

The first section winds through dense forest – a prelude: tight hairpin bends, followed by a series of fast-paced bends as a taster, before the main event begins. We work our way up from around 495 to over 2,000 metres in altitude. A flick of the driving mode selector, from Comfort to Dynamic, and the ‘soft focus’ is lifted – in the best possible sense. The steering becomes sharper, the feedback crystal clear, and the boost is ready. The difference isn’t huge. But it’s there, and it matters.

It’s particularly remarkable where the road has been patched together using different types of tarmac from three decades – a tapestry of nothing but good intentions from various governments. Here, where other chassis start to falter, the tyre simply stays where it belongs. On the road.

And then there’s the braking. Anyone who’s ever driven a modern electric car will be familiar with that artificial sensation – the noticeable transition from regenerative braking to friction braking – as if someone were changing their voice mid-sentence. The e-tron GT doesn’t do that. You can brake consistently right up to the ABS threshold, and even if it does intervene once, the pedal gives honest feedback on what’s happening. Brake later, get back on the accelerator sooner. From bend to bend, you dare to push harder. Stay cool, I think to myself; this is a country road, there’s nothing to be gained. After a brief breather and a moment’s prayer, the chase begins anew.

At Lake Bâlea, 2,034 metres above sea level, framed by Negoiu and Moldoveanu – the two highest mountains in the Romanian Carpathians – the real question of this journey arises. Is the combustion engine missing? The roar that Clarkson loved so much – the very reason this road seemed to have been built?

No.

It’s like ‘Dinner in the Dark’: when you take one sense away, the others become keener. Without the acoustic curtain of engines, you hear the wind, the forest, the tyres grinding at the limit of grip. You don’t drive any less. You drive more precisely. Once at the top, I feel as though I’ve just completed 28 laps of the Nordschleife – only with oncoming traffic.

What was used going uphill is recovered on the way down. The regenerative braking system feeds up to 400 kW back into the battery as we wind our way down towards the valley, bend after bend. No engine is starved of power here; none needs feeding. Except for the Audi. Which brings us back to the road signs.

On the southern side of the Transfăgărășan, the first bear is sitting by the roadside. Completely relaxed. And why not? Getting out of the car is out of the question. Another five members of the Ursidae family follow us all the way to Pitești. One has red smudges at the corners of its mouth. Tomato sauce, let’s say. From a Margherita pizza, perhaps?

Bran Castle greets you below. In tourist brochures, it is touted as Dracula’s lair. The historical figure who inspired Bram Stoker’s fictional character, Vlad III Drăculea, was, at best, a day-tripper here. That, too, is Romania: a country that draws its best legends from second-hand sources and yet still gets it right. And somewhere behind it all, the Vidraru Dam holds back 320 million cubic metres of water to generate electricity – as if someone had built the idea of this car into the landscape before the car was even invented.

At the end of this road, one realises that it never needed the noise that Mr Clarkson loves so much. You don’t have to shout at the mountains. You can simply drive through them.

Quietly.