10/07/2025
Transfăgărășan – Asphalted Megalomania
Deep in the Romanian Carpathians winds a road through rock, tunnels, and clouds—as if a particularly ambitious slot-car engineer had carved it into the mountain: the Transfăgărășan. Built in the early 1970s under Nicolae Ceaușescu as a military prestige project, it was originally designed less for driving pleasure and more as a strategic escape route—an emergency corridor across the Făgăraș Mountains in case of invasion.
Today, it’s considered one of the most spectacular driving roads in Europe—90 kilometres of pure drama and dynamic flow, climbing over 2,000 metres past glacial lakes, avalanche galleries, and brutalist concrete structures.
“We’d call it a mix between the Stelvio Pass, the Susten, and the Grödnerjoch,”
“and if there were such a thing as a slot-car track for the mountains, this would be the ultimate blueprint.”
Accessible only for a few months each year, the Transfăgărășan is no longer a secret. But those who make it there at the right time, in the right machine, won’t forget the drive.
