We don’t know what the longest road trip ever taken in Ferrari is, but Shahaf Galil’s 72-day, 24 000 km Scandinavian odyssey in a 458 is surely the stuff of grand touring legend, says article author Robb Pritchard.
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The route to owning a Ferrari, more often than not, involves owning a succession of improving sportscars before finally ending up with one of the world’s finest machines. Few can claim that a 458 is their first set of wheels, but living for many years in New York, Shahaf Gail seldom had use for a car. On his visits back to Europe, Ferraris were his rentals of choice for exploring the serpentine route of the Alps. So when the time came to buy his own road trip car, he knew exactly what he wanted and skipped all of the intermediary steps.
General consensus suggests that Ferrari’s larger GTs, such as the 812 or the GT4 Lusso, are better suited to long hours behind the wheel and would therefore make a more suitable long-distance road trip car, but Shahaf is such a big fan of the mid-mounted V8 layout he never considered buying anything else. “I’ve always loved how agile the 458 is,” he explains. “Perfect handling, how you can feel the road, especially with the stiff carbon-fibre seats. And the sound is divine. In my opinion, the 458 is the best road trip car ever made.”
Intended specifically for enjoying long drives, the car is kept in Germany and looked after by the Mertel Italo Cars in Nuremberg. After two years of stretching its legs around the sweeping roads of the Alps and Carpathians the odometer, which had been on 14 000 km when he’d bought it, was up to 25 000 km, but Shahaf never intended his 458 to be a mothballed in a garage. “I honestly don’t care about the miles,” he shrugs. “I bought it to drive, not as an investment. The unforgettable experiences in faraway places are much more important than its resale value.”
Wanting an epic trip somewhere farther than he’d ever explored before, he kept hearing great things about the landscapes of Norway, and in the second winter of lockdowns, Shahaf had plenty of long evenings to meticulously plan a route around Scandinavia. But the pandemic had a habit of scuppering the best plans… In early August 2021, Shahaf took the 20-hour ferry from Kiel in northern Germany to Oslo, but unfortunately, the Norwegian border officers didn’t recognise his vaccination certificate and wouldn’t let him enter. Despondently, he took the ferry back, thinking the trip was over before it had even begun. “At that point, I had two options,” he says. “Go home in a very bad mood and spend the forty days I’d booked off work with my feet up and the car in the garage… or try going the other way around, explore, enjoy and see what happens.” He chose the latter, of course.
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A quick jaunt through Denmark and he was soon in Sweden, where he took the scenic coastal road which wound between mirror lakes and beautiful waterfalls and led to picture-perfect towns. He accidentally discovered Sweden’s most exciting road, Brudfjällsvägen, a dream 10 km stretch of rollercoaster tarmac; perfect for any performance-car road tripper.
Entering Finland, he spent a few days island-hopping off the south coast. In the forested interior, he quickly came to understand why the WRC Rally Finland used to be called the 1 000 Lakes rally. But as he headed north, he got a bit closer to the rally stages than he wanted as tarmac was often in short supply. Consequently, Shahaf spent the next 10 days discovering the 458’s off-road capabilities. “It was horrible gravel as well,” he says, cringing at the memory. “The tarmac would abruptly end and then you’d have a 30 or 40 km stretch of 10-cm deep gravel. Quite often I didn’t believe the car would manage it.”
There is no off-road setting in a 458, so with the traction control on ‘Wet’ he slalomed around the potholes. Listening to the stones scratching against the underneath of the car for half an hour at a time, he was convinced he’d destroyed the car. Every morning, he would check underneath where it had been parked to check for leaks, in case a stone had cut an oil or cooling pipe. But although such off-roading was well beyond the 458’s design remit, it stood up to off-road use remarkably well.
Further north, the landscape became more desolate and the fuel stations further apart, so he had to ensure his route always involved such stretches were within the 458’s 300 km range. At the very north of Finland, where the border of Norway sweeps around, he tried to enter again. It took a few hours, but he managed to convince the guards to let him through, on the condition he spent three days quarantining in a hotel while he waited for test results. It was a good plan, except the results got lost and he ended up having to stay for seven days… staring at his filthy Ferrari through a hotel window every day.
By this time the thirty days he’d originally allocated for the trip had expired, but now he was finally in Norway there was no way he was going to head back home, especially as Norway was as spectacular as he’d imagined. “It was just so beautiful that every day I thought it just can’t get any prettier than this, but then the next day I would find something even more beautiful. And it carried on like this.” And so, he didn’t just drive slowly, he made a point of taking his time and drove to wherever took his fancy. “If a road looked interesting, I’d zip up it, look at the view and take some photos. If I ended up in a nice town I’d stop for lunch or a coffee, and I absolutely loved spending days like this. A free-form road trip.
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So far north, the autumn sets in early. In early September the mornings were frosty and the highest mountains had a dusting of snow. “I couldn’t risk getting caught in a snowstorm… not a few hundred kilometres above the Arctic Circle in autumn.” As it turns out, a 458 is good on gravel, but snow and ice is a different story; especially when you’re a long, long way from help.
One day he found himself on a particularly rough track, navigating between pot-holes and smiling to himself thinking that no other Ferraristi had ever driven their car up here before… but at the end, he found out that someone had beaten him. In no less than a Testarossa. Both were surprised to see each other, but the Ferrari brotherhood is strong and they sat and chatted, and shared stories.
Highlights in this stunning part of the world included the lighthouses at the Nordcapp, Europe’s most northerly point, the magical red forests, endless raised plains with wide curving roads and no cars in sight for hours, and Trollstigen which has eleven hairpins with a waterfall at each turn. He also found a pass that had hairpins inside a tunnel.
As the crow flies, it’s a long way from the Arctic to Oslo but the road south along the rugged coast constantly weaves around the never-ending fjords, so it took weeks to get back south… especially as Shahaf continued to detour around peninsulas or into the foothills of the mountains whenever the mood took him. One place he had to experience was the road to Lysebotn which has a grand total of 27 hairpins to get to the village at the bottom of the steep fjord.
When he finally got back to Denmark he still wasn’t ready to go home, though, and on a whim took a ferry to Iceland… and immediately regretted it, as three days being knocked around in six-metre-high waves in the North Atlantic in October was definitely not a fun journey. That despondent mood continued when he docked in Seydisfjordur as the pass out of the port town was blocked with snow. The winter weather had gone from being a limiting factor to a real danger as Icelandic winter storms are no place for a Ferrari… and it was quite disconcerting to see all the cars sporting studded tyres. Around midday, he decided that enough ice had melted for him to have a go. He didn’t mention that he was on summer tyres. Once again, the 458’s ‘Wet’ setting got him through.
Local wisdom warned against attempting the mountainous northern part of the loop but with a break in the weather, Shahaf cautiously decided to chance it.
In many countries soliciting truck drivers is frowned upon, but with sudden flurries blowing across the country and constantly changing conditions, Shahaf took to asking truckers in fuel stations what the conditions ahead were like ahead. “Sometimes it was hard to judge whether I should keep going or not; if the risk of continuing was worth the disappointment of having to turn back. Quite often it was a little hairy, but on the other side, out of the snow and ice, it was always an amazing feeling to have got through.” The endless road in a plane of black volcanic magma covered with patches of snow was a stunning vista… until the next band of snow came, and he couldn’t see much further than the front of the car. Fifteen hours behind the wheel got him through the mountains to the relative safety of Skutustadahreppur on the west coast. On the southern loop, he enjoyed standing on black sand beaches watching huge icebergs resembling blue glowing diamonds float away, the steaming turquoise waters of the blue lagoon, and massive waterfalls and geysers.
There are only three Ferraris in Iceland, so wherever Shahaf stopped people were always surprised to see the 458, especially children, who Shahaf supposes, had probably only seen a car like this in magazines or on the internet. He was more than happy to let them sit behind the wheel.
After 72 days, 47 ferry rides, and an incredible 24 000 trouble-free kilometres, he headed back to Germany. The car had underwent the requisite 20 000 km oil change in Oslo, but otherwise hadn’t required any further work for the entire trip. At home, it went for a comprehensive 200-point inspection and understandably Shahaf was nervous while he waited, half expecting a huge repair bill from his incredible 2 000 km spent off-road. Apart from needing a thorough clean and a repair for some peeling clear coat, absolutely nothing needed doing.
While a two-and-a-half month-long road trip might be plenty long enough for some of us, Shahaf is now hungry for more. And there’s only one trip in his mind more extreme than 10 weeks in Scandinavia… a trip around the world. A classic Porsche 928 owner did the trip a few years ago and Shahaf is currently researching how to drive all the way through Russia and ship the Ferrari to the West Coast of America. It looks like there’s no rest in sight for Shahaf’s adventurous 458!
Find the full feature in the October 2024 issue of CAR Magazine.