The best driving roads in Autobahn Stretches

The German autobahn is the only place in the developed world where a properly engineered car can be driven the way it was built to be driven. Significant stretches remain derestricted, and on the right road at the right hour, the car you spent serious money on can finally show you what it really is.

The skill of autobahn driving is not, as the cliché has it, going as fast as you can. It is reading flow. The good autobahn driver senses where the gaps will open three hundred metres ahead, drifts left only when committed to overtake, and gets back right the instant the lane is clear. Cars approach from behind at 80 km/h closure rates; you must see them coming. Mirror discipline isn't a courtesy here, it's a survival skill.

The stretches listed here are the ones we'd put a foreign visitor on first: long, mostly flat, surface quality maintained, traffic predictable, and with reliably derestricted segments. Drive them at dawn on a weekday in October, with a tank of premium and a car that's been properly serviced. There is nothing else like it in driving.