Frozen out: Ice driving in the Arctic with O’Gara Coach

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Ever wondered where the great and good of Hollywood buy their dream machines? Head to 8423 Wilshire Boulevard. That’s where you’ll find the headquarters of one of Los Angeles’ most exclusive car dealerships, O’Gara Coach Beverly Hills, a one-stop shop for Bugattis, Koenigseggs, Pininfarinas and a slew of other superbrands.

In Hollywood, however, discretion is key. Especially when you’re in the business of dealing with high-profile customers, including the likes of American football star Tom Brady and his former model wife Gisele Bündchen, or Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

“Celebrity has changed in Los Angeles,” explains Parris Mullins, O’Gara’s director of motorsport and special projects. “The big names don’t want to be recognised driving a luxury car and then for it to be put on Instagram when they’re stuck in traffic.”

That’s why, says Mullins, so many stars use motorcycles to get around these days. “They can wear a helmet and nobody recognises them. I can’t tell you how many times I have pulled up alongside Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt in a traffic jam.”

And it’s these sorts of clients – high-profile motoring enthusiasts who want to explore the capabilities of their machines while maintaining a low profile – for whom Mullins curates twice-yearly lifestyle adventures to some of the planet’s most high-octane destinations. Recent trips having included driving tours of Morocco, Japan and Iceland, with Argentina and Chile on the list for 2024.

“We first had the idea of customer drives while on a tour of Greece in a McLaren P1 – it then morphed into these epic adventures for clients that everybody now wants to get involved with. All our clients have to do is turn up and drive – we do the rest.”

At the beginning of this year, I joined a six-day O’Gara trip to the Arctic Circle. An exclusive party of 15 guests – including actors, business leaders and yacht brokers – signed up to a £26,000 drive of a lifetime, during which temperatures would dip to as low as -37°C.

This northerly region of Sweden features packed snow, a lot of pine trees and nothing much else. At 66 degrees north there are less than six hours of daylight during the bitter winter months, although that does mean a good chance of witnessing the breath-taking Northern Lights.

Stig Blomqvist is a legendary figure in motorsport. A former World Rally Champion – driving the ground-breaking Audi Quattro – Blomqvist won a string of titles, including his home event, the Swedish Rally, seven times. Now aged 77, the real ‘Stig’ runs his own ice-driving track on a frozen lake at Jokkmokk.

Learning to steer a car on ice is a steep and slippery learning curve, irrespective of how good you are on Tarmac. Power is nothing without control and the busiest person on the circuit is a man replacing the traffic cones that are frequently scattered in all directions.

“Many of the people who visit us drive supercars every day,” says Blomqvist. “But very few have actually experienced frozen surfaces like this. When you have fully mastered the skill, you can travel pedal-to-the-floor on ice. It’s probably why so many Scandinavians have been rally champions.”

Driving the right car helps. Blomqvist has a fleet of different models to test our skills, ranging from a 1980s Audi Quattro to a modern-day Porsche Cayman. Each is shod with studded snow tyres to provide extra grip, but a fast lap still depends on sliding sideways through a corner, then powering out in a straight line.

This demanding ballet-on-ice can be daunting – approach a corner too fast, and you’ll career off. During his rallying days, Blomqvist would use the snow bank as a buffer to direct his car up the track. Judge it wrong and the car’s radiator will become packed with snow, overheating the engine.

Slowly, my own dance on ice improves, helped by warm-up interval breaks in a trackside hut. Fortified by reindeer stew and a roaring log fire, I trim my lap time down to just under three minutes. Septuagenarian Blomqvist is still managing the course in under two minutes.

That evening, tales of our ice-driving experience are exchanged at the Arctic Bath – a floating hotel styled like a bird’s nest. In the centre is an open-air plunge pool to the freezing lake below, while the whole hotel is dedicated to wellness and eco-friendly health treatments.

Guests stay in floating cabins connected to the lake shore by a pontoon walkway. To sample indigenous Sami food, we travel to the remote town of Harads, where moose and Arctic char are seasoned with cloudberries and lingonberries. Smoked butter on local gakkhu flatbread proves decidedly moreish.

The next day we drive west to Arvidsjaur – the global home of winter car testing for every major automotive brand, from Lamborghini to Continental Tyres. The frozen lake circuits attract engineers and drivers who are able to push their cars to the limit in the most demanding conditions.

Created 50 years ago on Sweden’s deepest lake, the popularity of the track causes the local population to double to 6,000 people over the winter months. The track is longer and more open than Jokkmokk, allowing higher speeds and creating a higher risk of crashes. Learning to ice drive is all about balance and gentle application of power. This is where Mercedes came in the 1970s to test the world’s first anti-lock braking system in the S-Class.

The serious part of all this slipping and sliding is that, in theory, I should be able to draw on the skills I’ve refined on the ice track, should I need to, on frozen public roads back home.

The following day sees a lengthy drive north to the legendary ski resort of Riksgränsen, on the north Swedish border with Norway. Apart from the ever-present threat of wandering moose, every passing lorry sends up a cloud of powder snow that causes near white-out conditions. The town was once the place for free-ride skiers and snowboarders – it’s still one of the ultimate destinations for winter sports, including snowmobiling and dog-sled racing.

The roads here are either snow-packed or sheets of ice, but the 14-bedroom Niehku Mountain Villa, a converted railway engine works, is worth the final part of our journey. Almost 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, close to the soaring peaks of the Kebnekaise Massif, the hotel welcomes us with open fire pits and a range of massage services at its design-led spa.

After a super-strength cocktail at the hotel’s low-lit bar, it’s clear we won’t be driving anywhere anytime soon.

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