Wempe - Porsche Ice Force and AMG Winter Driving
WORLDTEMPUS - 19 April 2010
I decided to extend my annual trip to Geneva's S.I.H.H. in January and visit any car buff's Holy Grails: the Porsche and Mercedes Benz museums in Stuttgart as well as a personal tour through the AMG factory in Affalterbach. I was actually welcomed there with a proudly displayed American flag—now that's attention to detail. As if that wasn't enough, I ventured on to partake in the Mercedes AMG Winter Driving event in Arjeplog, Sweden, and a few weeks later the Porsche Ice Force in Ivalo, Finland.
The experience was incredible: the Mercedes AMG E63, C63 and SLK55 and the Cayman S, 911 C2S, C4S, Turbo and Panamera 4S are all equipped with studded winter tires to gain traction on the giant frozen lakes' endless tracks. I basically drove sideways from 9:30 am until 5:00 pm for three days straight, only interrupted by coffee breaks and sumptuous lunches with 40 other car enthusiasts from all over the world.
Being in the watch business, I thought it would also be a great opportunity to test a few of the world's best sports watches under these frigid conditions—so I left a Rolex Deepsea, an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, a Panerai Marina Diver, and our very own limited edition Wempe Zeitmeister ceramic chronograph outside overnight at -24°F. Needless to say, I slept a little uneasy having watches worth over $55,000 lying in the snow on my balcony unattended, but then again, nobody would have suspected these kinds of treasures there either.
This was an experiment I wouldn't have dared to pull off in New York. All watches performed well, by the way, and even the rubber straps survived the night in the cold without becoming brittle. As for the driving experience, it was exhilarating and certainly has greatly increased my car control skills. We kept the Porsche Cayenne and Mercedes ML drivers busy as we overshot corners and turns just to find ourselves in two feet of snow.
The beautiful thing was that you couldn't get hurt or damage the cars. I'm not quite ready to initiate the drift with the brake when I turn on Fifth Avenue into 55th Street in front of the Wempe store, but it sure is tempting.