Car Museums, Mountains, and the Stelvio: Inside the Motorhead Alps Tour

Ferrari, Lamborghini, Pagani, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Alfa Romeo — six museums, three countries, and the Stelvio in between. The Motorhead Alps is Blue Strada’s tour for people who love cars as much as they love driving them.

Every Blue Strada sports car tour is built around driving roads. The Motorhead Alps is built around driving roads and something else entirely: a circuit of car museums and factories that define the cars driving enthusiasts care about most. Over ten days and 1,800 kilometers, the route connects Lamborghini, Pagani, and Ferrari in Italy with BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes-Benz in Germany, crosses the Alps through Austria, climbs the Stelvio, and finishes at the Alfa Romeo Museum back in Milan. In between, there is a 15-minute session on the Modena Autodrome track and a ride in a Ferrari F1 simulator.

This is not a driving tour with museum stops bolted on. It is a car museum circuit with extraordinary driving in between — and for guests who have spent years admiring these brands from a distance, it closes a loop that very few people ever get to close in person.

Day One: Lamborghini and Pagani, Back to Back

After a welcome dinner in Milan, the tour collects its Miatas and heads south on the Autostrada A1 — a fast, direct leg that exists for one reason: to get the group to Modena as efficiently as possible, because what’s waiting there does not need a scenic approach to justify itself. The Lamborghini Museum and Factory in Sant’Agata Bolognese is the first stop, followed by the Pagani Museum & Atelier — Horacio Pagani’s hand-built hypercar operation, where the line between automobile and sculpture gets genuinely difficult to locate. Two of the most exclusive car manufacturers in the world, on the same afternoon, is not a normal Tuesday for anyone. The group overnights in Modena, in the heart of Italy’s Motor Valley.

Day Two: Ferrari, the F1 Simulator, and the Modena Autodrome

The second day of this Miata driving tour belongs entirely to Ferrari — the museum and factory in Maranello, a guided shuttle tour of the factory and the Fiorano test track, and a 10-minute session in a Ferrari F1 driving simulator. Then, in the afternoon, the group takes its own Miatas onto the Modena Autodrome for 15 minutes of track driving — a rare opportunity to drive the tour car on a closed circuit rather than a public road, with none of the usual traffic, blind corners, or oncoming vehicles to think about. For most guests, this is the first time they have driven on a real racetrack. The overnight stays in the same Modena hotel, which means no luggage shuffle after a day that asks enough of you already.

Day Three: Into the Dolomites — the Manghen Pass

After the museums, the driving begins in earnest. The route passes through the handsome town of Bassano del Grappa before climbing into the Dolomites and over the Manghen Pass — a tough, technical climb that doesn’t have the international fame of the Stelvio but earns its place on this tour by difficulty and reward rather than by reputation. With the top down on a convertible, it is the kind of pass that enthusiasts seek out specifically because it isn’t crowded. The day ends in the Fassa Valley, deep in the heart of the Dolomites, at an Alpine hotel surrounded by some of the most dramatic limestone scenery in Europe.

Day Four: Crossing Three Countries — Italy, Austria, Germany

Day four is the geographic hinge of the tour. The morning continues through the Dolomites with a stop in the charming village of Brunico, climbing more of the passes that make this region a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Then the route crosses into Austria, and from there into Germany, arriving at the famous Alpine ski town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen — host of the 1936 Winter Olympics and still one of the most recognizable names in Alpine sport. Three countries in a single day, on a tour that started in Italy and is about to spend its next three days deep in German car culture.

For drivers who want to know more about the Italian Alpine passes this section touches on, Above the Tree Line: A Driver’s Guide to the Italian Alpine Passes covers them in depth — including the Manghen, and why it earns its place on this route specifically.

Day Five: The Autobahn to BMW and Porsche

One fast run on a German Autobahn — the genuine article, not the speed-limited sections most visitors experience — brings the group to the BMW Museum in Munich, the futuristic bowl-shaped building that has become as iconic as the cars inside it. From there, another Autobahn leg continues to Stuttgart, home to two of the most significant automotive collections in the world.

Day Six: Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, the Full Day

An entire day dedicated to two museums that, between them, tell much of the story of German automotive engineering: the Porsche Museum and Factory and the Mercedes-Benz Museum. Both are architectural landmarks in their own right — the Porsche Museum’s cantilevered steel-and-glass form and the Mercedes-Benz Museum’s double-helix design are destinations even for people with no interest in cars, and for people who do have that interest, the collections inside are extraordinary. The group stays in the same Stuttgart hotel for a second night, with no driving required until the following morning.

Day Seven: Neuschwanstein Castle

After three days of museums and Autobahns, day seven is a change of pace — a drive to the village of Füssen to visit Neuschwanstein Castle, the nineteenth-century fairy-tale castle built for King Ludwig II of Bavaria that inspired the Disneyland castle. It is one of the most photographed buildings in Europe, and seeing it in person — particularly arriving by road through the Bavarian countryside rather than off a tour bus — is a different experience entirely. After six days immersed in engineering and racing history, a castle built purely for beauty and fantasy is the right kind of contrast.

Day Eight: Back to the Alps — the Stelvio

The tour returns to the mountains, and to Italy, via the Stelvio Pass — the second-highest paved pass in the Alps and one of the most famous driving roads in the world. After a week that included two of Europe’s great Autobahns and dozens of kilometers of museum corridors, the Stelvio’s 48 hairpins — summit air rushing through the open roadster — are a reminder of why everyone on this tour chose a Miata in the first place. The day ends in the Alpine valley of Valtellina, with the Stelvio behind you and Milan a day away.

For the full story of the Stelvio and the other high passes on Blue Strada’s routes, see Above the Tree Line: A Driver’s Guide to the Italian Alpine Passes.

Day Nine: Alfa Romeo and the Farewell Dinner

The final driving day brings the group back to Milan, with a stop at the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese — the marque whose home country this tour has spent ten days exploring, and a fitting place to close the circuit that began with Lamborghini and Pagani on day one. The Miatas go back to their garage, and the tour ends with a farewell dinner that, after this particular ten days, has a great deal to celebrate.

Who This Tour Is For

The Motorhead Alps sits at a different point on the spectrum than Blue Strada’s other guided driving tours. Where the Italian & Swiss Alps is built around maximizing pass driving and Tuscany balances driving with food, wine, and hill towns, the Motorhead Alps is built around the cars themselves — as objects of engineering, design, and history, not just as things to drive. Guests who have always wanted to walk through some of the world’s great car museums, sit in a Ferrari F1 simulator, or stand in front of the Pagani atelier’s hand-built creations will find that this tour delivers all of it, with genuinely excellent driving — including the Stelvio and the Manghen — woven through.

It also covers ground that no other Blue Strada tour touches. This is the only tour that enters Austria and Germany, the only tour with Autobahn driving, and the only tour with track time included. For guests who have done Tuscany or the Italian & Swiss Alps and are looking for something with a genuinely different character for a second or third trip, the Motorhead Alps is that tour.

Other Alps Tours

The Alps are big enough for more than one kind of trip, and Blue Strada runs three distinct routes through them. The Italian & Swiss Alps tour is built for guests who want maximum pass coverage — eight passes in eight nights, including a free day in Andermatt to do it all again. The French Alps tour, part of the Pyrenees, Provence & French Alps route, takes a different shape entirely — Spain into France, with the Route des Grandes Alpes as its centerpiece. The Motorhead Alps sits apart from both: same mountains, but built around the museums and factories of the brands that define the cars Blue Strada guests already love to drive.