There’s a peculiar moment when, driving in formation with your mates, the rush kicks in.
No longer are you Joe Bloggs trundling down the motorway. This is much more grandiose. You’re Burt Reynolds making a break for the border, Luke Skywalker charging at the Death Star.
No matter how flamboyant the cars, the scenery or the driving, there’s just something about a convoy that gets my ticker going. Somehow, sharing in the experience – mundane as it could well be – amplifies its enjoyability several times over.
Perhaps a great deal of it comes down to the feeling of safety we humans get from travelling in a pack, no doubt passed down from our prehistoric forebears.
I encountered this feeling on a recent drive with colleague Sam Phillips, headed home to London after a hearty lunch at Caffeine & Machine near Winchester. We made quiet, comfortable progress until an almighty storm rolled over the M3.
It descended so abruptly and violently that a summer’s afternoon almost immediately became winter’s eve, obscuring anything more than a few car lengths ahead. I could hardly see, let alone form a coherent thought, as innumerable SUVs and 4x4s kicked off a spray that lashed well above my little Mazda MX-5’s canvas roof with a jarring fwoomp at every pass.
But every 30 seconds, and with each pulse of the big vein in my forehead, I would catch a flash of red from the roof of Phillips’ Renault Clio 182 Trophy. Suddenly, all was well.
It was an utterly irrational reaction, for it certainly didn’t make the conditions any less perilous. If anything, his Day-Glo paintwork probably worked to distract busy eyes from my jet black, low-slung orb. Yet the knowledge that I wasn’t alone in my suffering – through what were easily the worst conditions I’ve yet endured on the road – provided immediate relief.
Perhaps there’s more to it than pure tribalism, though. A convoy typically represents either the start or the end of something great; at least sufficiently so to justify summoning a crowd. From something as simple as a Sunday drive to major milestones like moving a son or daughter to university, there’s almost always a positive atmosphere underlying a convoy.
Of course, some restraint must be exercised – particularly when enjoying unfamiliar roads or on the return from a social gathering. Get too comfortable and push the limits too hard and you risk wiping out not just your own car but also those of mates and nearby innocents.
But even in maintaining the required discipline – appointing a level-headed pack leader and taking heed of following distances and environmental dangers – there’s a satisfaction to be found. Get it right and you will be in for a whale of a time.
