Tasmania’s Prancing Horse driving experience lets you test Ferrari, McLaren and Lamborghini on scenic routes
Tasmania’s remote north becomes the ultimate playground when the keys come attached to six-figure engines — and someone else foots the fuel bill.
A perky woman serving Real Housewives Of Melbourne vibes clambers from the passenger side of a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS.
The most hardcore track model on today’s impressive supercar menu doesn’t lend itself to graceful exits — principally because it doesn’t particularly care about the passenger. It has, beyond a wondrous a 3.4-second 0-100km/h time, a conspicuous disregard for comfort that extends to a lack of interior door handles (to save weight, and perhaps as an obtuse German joke, Porsche has replaced them with strips of fabric that do not come at a discount).
“That was AMAZING!...” gushes the Melburnian housewife, luminous dentistry flashing. The first sunlight has just kissed the depths of the adjacent valley and birdsong hangs in Tasmania’s famously pristine air that smells, mostly, of heated brakes. “… Anyone else wants to vomit?”
Welcome to the surprisingly accessible world of luxury supercar driving experiences.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Much of a given day is spent rotating through a convoy of engineering marvels piloting Australia’s best roads, operating across a spectrum of exhilaration, intimidation and endless fun. With the occasional side of nausea.
Matt Thio has been guiding these events for the best part of two decades.
Based in Sydney, if rarely at home, Thio’s Prancing Horse outfit visits five States each year, lingering across eight consecutive multi-month residences.
Tasmania, with its culinary energy, cool-weather culture and the country’s finest driving roads, hosts the cavalcade each February, based out of Launceston.
The premise here is simple. Drivers book and arrive in pairs, typically as couples. Depending on numbers, Thio and his teams then select five or six cars from their impressive travelling stable. Cycling through the vehicles, each attendee is given time behind the wheel of each car across a day spent driving 200-300km.
Between multiple stops for driver changes and suitably artisanal Tassie fare, this can take 10 or more hours.
“We stress that it’s in no way a racing experience,” Thio tells ROAM.
Even partners who’ve gifted a Prancing Horse package to a car-fancying partner, and who declare a firm preference for the passenger seat, are encouraged to have a go.
“That’s a challenge accepted from our perspective — to ensure that they drive because it’s always the things you least expect that you remember most.”
The roster of vehicles is always evolving but routinely exotic, with a stable including four Ferraris, a pair of McLarens, Porsches, Lotuses, Corvettes, as well as the odd Audi R8, Aston Martin and Lamborghini Huracan EVO.
“Insurance is a nightmare,” laughs Thio. “Luckily, though, we’ve only had three crashes in over 18 years.”
Even so, a stone chip in the wrong spot on a Ferrari 488 GTB can cost thousands; replacing the windscreen in a Huracan? Think $8000.
The thing about supercars, though, is that they want to be driven like supercars. And they’re persuasive. Setting off along a north-east route from Tasmania’s second city sees the fleet almost immediately launch into a sublime series of bends, alternating through sepia tone farmland and abrupt eucalypt-crowded hills.
The attendant Prancing Horse drive team, hustling at the front in an Alfa Romeo Giulia lead car, provides a reassuringly constant patter of real-time information via a two-way radio. They relay potential hazards such as roadkill (omnipresent), caravan-hauling grey nomads (rare), or gravel verges (see above: stone chips).
The convoy pinballs through pinprick villages and regular stops, where it’s thronged each time by enthusiastic, car-fancying children. So, too, nonplussed children brandished by enthusiastic, car-fancying adults.
Between each station — morning tea at the Western Tiers Distillery in Westbury, samplings at Deloraine’s Melita Honey Farm, a spot of history and barehanded unearthing at The Truffle Farm Tasmania — the stars are, of course, the cars.
Whether the driver is sporting a twin set and pearls or a Nurburgring polo, each model offers a unique series of epiphanies.
There’s the brusque Porsche GT4 RS with its passenger seat challenges and machete subtlety. There’s the marvellously monstrous Lamborghini Huracan, a car that telegraphs its intentions like sending Mike Tyson to negotiate a trade deal, and the dispassionate surgical precision of the McLaren Artura, with its flashy scissor doors. The show-pony Corvette Z06 is a brutal American. And then there’s the flawless Ferrari 296 GTB, an exotic hybrid so outrageously capable that it dooms everything thereafter to feel slightly disappointing, like losing one’s virginity to Aphrodite.
“There’s no pressure,” says Thio. “You have time to enjoy the scenery and share it with someone you know … And that experience, including meeting people you don’t know at the start, with whom you’re sharing the same emotions throughout the day, is really bonding.”
Out of the passenger seat and back behind the wheel, the Melbourne housewife relishes her return serve — and the Porsche barks off towards alpine fields of split grey boulders and arthritic pencil pines.
Having begun the day with amused reticence, declaring herself “not a car person”, she’s suddenly seen the dappled Tasmanian light.
“The Porsche was amazing, but it’s maybe a little too focused, you know?” she says later, over drinks. “But the 296 is just so balanced, tipping into corners … ”
From $5500 per couple (excluding transfers and accommodation); prancinghorse.com.au
