A Pack of Porsches Tackles 14 Alpine Passes In One Weekend

Images © Stefan Bogner, courtesy of Delius Klasing

Fourteen Alpine passes in four days with a dozen Porsches? Photographer Stefan Bogner has produced the impossible: a most epic set of Porsche road trip pictures for his immensely cool new book Porsche Drive from German publisher Delius Klasing. Through Switzerland, Italy, and Austria an armada of Stuttgart’s finest traversed incredible scenery that serves as the ideal backdrop for their mechanical perfection, along with roads seemingly emptied of other, lesser vehicles.

Leading the way in his own 1970 911 ST, Bogner lenses the amazing likes of everything, from the 356 and 906 / Carrera 6—Porsche’s last street-legal racer—to the sizzling 918 Spyder hybrid supercar. You can almost hear the roar of the engines echoing off the rock faces as you flip through. This isn’t merely car porn, though; Bogner and Jan Baedeker, editor in chief of Classic Driver, provide a highly detailed and practical guide to tackling each Alpine pass in your own Porsche, including distance, altitude, and scenic stops.

The premise of the book is that those with enough gumption can traverse all 14 passes in the course of one long weekend’s spirited driving. While the 918 might make better time than the 356, the point, however, is not to go as fast as possible. (Surely a life-threatening thought, considering some of the tortuous turns.) “A lot of corners and not a lot of sleep,” is how Baedeker describes what amounts to the “Mille Miglia of the Alps”.

Who needs sleep, anyway?