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Me, eight AM in sitting inside a 997 Trubo on this road. 
Life doesn't get better than that.
Life doesn't get better than that.
The Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the greatest driving road in the world. Stretching for 7.3 miles and climbing nearly 4,000 feet, it boasts 60 corners and a surface so smooth that it would flatter a racetrack. It could easily be described as the eighth wonder of the world, but almost nothing is known about its creation.
The road is cut into the Jebel Hafeet mountain, the highest peak in the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich Persian Gulf state. The mountain spans the border with Oman and lies about 90 minutes' drive southeast of the thriving city of Dubai. It looks down upon a dusty, desert landscape that belies a nation of astonishing wealth.
We've got two days in which to explore this mountain in a Mini Cooper S Convertible, which is something of a novelty in this part of the world. In the UAE, the BMW 7 Series outsells the 5 Series, which outsells the 3 Series. Everything here is big and ostentatious, so the sight of two Englishmen in a "hot orange" Mini Cooper S Convertible is a source of some amusement.
An unknown history
The view beyond the Mini's hood could have been rendered by a computer game designer, after a Red Bull too many. Three lanes of immaculate highway — two up and one down — are carved into the limestone mountain in one continuous squiggle.
Short, rapid straights are interspersed with sweeping curves that merge seamlessly from one to another. Some are to be taken at high speed with a single steering input and plenty of commitment; others are tight and technical, requiring patience and precision. The size of your brain is just as important as the size of your manhood.
A Mini adventure
It seems astonishing to think that it's been almost five years since the first of the BMW Minis rolled out of Oxford, England. Recreating one of the most iconic European cars of the 20th century was a significant gamble and few could have predicted what a huge success it would prove to be. BMW is currently building around 190,000 Minis each year, which is double its original target. There's also been no reduction in demand, despite the imminent arrival of a new model.
The car's success is a testament to the brilliance of its design. The Mini is arguably the best engineered small car since the Issignosis original. Its strength lies in its detailing. The Mini isn't cheap — the Cooper S convertible we test here will set you back about $26,000 — but it feels like a quality product.
BMW's engineers have also succeeded in decapitating the Mini without removing its soul. The convertible isn't quite as sharp as the hatchback — that would be asking too much — but it's still fun. Body flex is minimal, the steering remains as positive as ever and the Cooper S's stable of 168 horses is just enough to cope with the gradient. The harder we push the 16-inch tires, the more the Mini responds and the wider our grin.
A bizarre history lesson
The Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road must have cost $100 million to build, but its origins remain shrouded in mystery. You can buy an enormous guidebook detailing the hydrogeology of the local spring, or the DNA of the resident butterflies, but info on the road itself is almost impossible to find.
Desperate for more information, we seek out the manager of the Mercure Hotel that opened at the top of the mountain three years ago. Rajesh Kapoor reckons that the road "was completed about a dozen years ago. I think the architect was Swedish because we had a Swedish guest stay who claimed that her husband was responsible for it." But that contradicts a claim made in a natural history guidebook that says the road was built in 1987.
Official sources suggest it was built as a honey pot for tourists who travel from nearby cities to sample the mountain air. But with the exception of the surprisingly mediocre hotel, there's almost nothing here. The road culminates in a huge car park, but the tatty café is unworthy of custom.
Perhaps the real, unspoken reason for the road's existence is to be found a mile from the hotel. There, sitting on top of the mountain, is a huge palace belonging to Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the current ruler of the Emirates. His face also adorns a huge banner announcing the entrance to the road and it's under his watch that it was constructed. This incredible feat of engineering is actually no more than a giant driveway. It's enough to make Bill Gates green with envy.
A nighttime excursion
Late in the evening, we return to the sheikh's driveway. From a vantage point about halfway up the mountain, we're able to look down on a dramatic twist of tarmac that's now bathed in neon. The streetlamps, of which there must be 500, are tuned to light not only the road, but also the adjacent rock. At Le Mans, 230-mph racecars must light the Mulsanne for themselves, while here in the Emirates, an empty road is slow-roasted by a million watts.
Further down the mountain we find a series of lurid tire marks, suggesting that we're not the only enthusiasts taking advantage of this motoring nirvana. The appearance of black paint on one of the border posts even suggests that some might have been trying a little too hard. Our friendly hotelier reckons that Land Rover's test engineers have been using the mountain for hot-weather testing and that the residents of Weissach (Porsche) will soon be paying him a visit.
Kapoor also points me in the direction of a Gulf News article headlined "Racing 4-wheel drives put visitors' lives at risk." In it, an official from the Traffic Police Department admits that "the possibility of some mischievous youngsters doing something drastic could not be ruled out." Feeling like naughty schoolboys ourselves, we park the Mini and slope off to bed.
The morning after
Today is a Saturday, but the traffic is still laughably light. And because there are two lanes all the way up the mountain, stray vehicles can be picked off with ease. Swapping between 2nd, 3rd and occasionally 4th gear, we make good use of the 1.6-liter engine's 168 hp and 162 pound-feet. The new Mini's engine will be turbocharged but we'll miss the trademark whine and linear shove afforded by this car's supercharger.
Late in the morning we indulge with a final blast up the hill. It takes us around 8.5 minutes to complete all 60 corners and scale the UAE's highest mountain. It's nonsense to suggest we wouldn't have had more fun in a Ferrari F430, but on this kind of road the Mini's smile-per-mile quotient is high.
BMW spared no expense when it developed the current Cooper and rumors persist that the Mini is more expensive to produce than the 3 Series. The new car needs to be cheaper to build and it will be interesting to see how the Munich boffins solve this particular conundrum without diminishing its quality. This first-generation BMW Mini could yet go down as a classic.
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan spared no expense when he commissioned the Hafeet Mountain Road. It would be easy to dismiss such extravagance as vulgar, but that would be to demean the majesty of the achievement. In every sense of the word, this is the world's greatest drive.
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