Mazda Route3: Day Four

Mazda broke rule one of long road trips on the evening of day three – it washed the cars! All except one, that is – the red #1 Mazda3 of stalwart German weekly car magazine, AutoBild. Christened Natasha, that car fronted day four and the last border crossing in all its grimy glory.

The German market is a huge potential growth area for Mazda and with Route3 it wanted to build on the relationship Mazda’s long-distance Frankfurt show drives had already formed with the German magazine.

Europe’s largest circulating auto mag, Autobild was the one media entity that joined Route3 from go to whoa. Its car was under a strict ‘no clean’ order so it could be displayed at Frankfurt with 15,000km-plus of road grime.

Back in 1990 when the car-maker drove four 626s from Hiroshima to Frankfurt, AutoBild publisher Axel Springer AG’s head office in Berlin hosted a visit from the Mazda delegation as it neared the end of its trip.

Route3 would be no different. In fact, AutoBild even intended to re-enact some of the records of the visit – including restaging photos in the inner sanctum of the media giant, its timber-lined executive dining room and library.

In Warsaw, motoring.com.au was recruited to help the AutoBild effort for the day. Yours truly’s regular co-driver, Mazda Product Evaluation engineer Florian Callies, was replaced with Germany’s Jeremy Clarkson, Wolfgang Rother, and we were on the way…

Flat, fast miles followed. In contrast to the single-lane highway to the Belarus frontier to the east, the roads between Poland and Germany were wide multi-lane superhighways -- better in fact than most of the de-restricted autobahns of its neighbour. It’s like the country has turned its back on Belarus and Russia and sought to embrace its European heritage – at least in terms of transport.

Though initially most of the convoy respected the 140km/h limit on the Polish roads, soon the pace crept up closer to the old ton. The regular, manual paying of tolls punctuated the kilometres but so too did a bit of ‘banter’ between our car and the #8 car of Italian auto editor Alessandro Lago and Mazda Italy’s Facebook competition winner and blogger, Fulvio.

The occasional soft drink shower and even a potato ‘smokescreen’ was employed to keep the Italian boys in their place – behind the Aussie-Bavarian car. All in god fun.

Just a single non-fuel stop in the 600km – a picnic lunch at Swiebodzin, where the world’s largest statue of Jesus has been built. At 52.5 metres, it’s claimed Christ the King is three metres taller than Rio De Janiero’s signature, Christo Redento. That may be the case, but I can guarantee you that the beaches are better in Brazil…

Time was again against the convoy. Indeed, every factor of a road trip takes longer with ten cars in convoy. Take refuelling for example… And we were doing that more often than you’d think. It’s not that the Mazda3s were thirsty -- far from it, with our average fuel economy sneaking into the high 6.0L/100km range on day four despite the high speeds.

No, in this case blame our CX-9 support and photography vehicles. Each loaded to the gunwales, the V6 petrol-engined wagons regularly needed refuelling 120-150km before the hatches.

There was ne’er a sign that we crossed into Germany, just the remains of a customs check that is now inhabited by money changers.

Breaking away from the rest of the Route3 crew, Natasha and motoring.com.au’s Mazda3 made good time into Berlin and were parked in the forecourt of Axel Springer’s HQ in time to catch the near-perfect evening light. The photographers at least were happy...

This writer is on Twitter @petrolhedonist

Route3 with Mazda: From Minsk to Frankfurt

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