Why Supercar Road Trips With Club GT Should Be on Your Bucket List

You’ve taken delivery of your 750 hp supercar or 1,000 hp hypercar, but after the honeymoon phase of blissfully staring at it and driving around town, you start to think about where you can really pilot it. Familiar roads you believed perfect for a Sunday blast are crammed with other petrol heads who also thought it would be a good idea for a dawn patrol of the tarmac, but, well, where else is there? The answer to your question, and road trip dreams, just may lie with a Londoner named Kevin.

Kevin Giblin, age 51, runs Club GT, established in 2006. It’s a drivers’ club that organizes and hosts exclusive international automotive adventures comprising rarely more than 10 cars, which are either driven by their owners or provided. And while many of the vehicles have Michelin written on their tires, so do the plaques and menus at many of the hotels and restaurants hosting luxurious pit stops. This is next-level motoring, with the best dining and accommodations the routes and regions can provide.

Giblin is a walking, talking international Google maps; organized, perceptive, detail-focused, digging out the best roads, seemingly able to predict what’s around the next corner—whether it’s a road hazard or the inevitable unforeseen mechanical glitch. He meticulously researches, plans, and drives the routes in advance, ensuring that when a road trip starts rolling, it keeps moving. And, as the “entry level” car for participants is a Porsche 911, the journeys move at an impressive pace. Examples from Bugatti and Pagani, as well as limited-edition McLaren, Ferrari, and Lamborghini models often form the majority of the field.

Giblin leads the group in his Porsche 911 Turbo S (“it’s a car that can do everything, is dependable, and needs to be,” says Giblin), knowing when to slow, but equally willing to up the pace as circumstances allow. Everybody is equipped with a two-way radio, and Giblin keeps up a constant commentary on what’s ahead—potholes, hidden dips, wildlife, vehicles traveling both directions, you name it. “At first, it’s irritating, but you quickly realize how that commentary improves the experience,” says a Ferrari-driving participant named Stephen.

At the back, there’s another member of the team operating as “sweeper” in case somebody gets left behind or has a problem. A support team includes a photographer, videographer, and a Club GT fixer who is ready to sort out mechanical or technical problems.

Yet despite Giblin’s home base in England, and partnership with 43-year-old joint managing partner Robert Crosthwaite-Eyre—yes, his family is as gentrified and connected as the name implies—Club GT has never previously set about exploring Britain’s roads. I was invited to join their first domestic jaunt through the swooping byways and challenging passes of the hyper-telegenic Derbyshire and Yorkshire Dales, driving between the beautifully set Wildhive Callow Hall and five-star Grantley Hall hotels.

Joining a group of nine driving enthusiasts—ranging in background from “something in finance” to a “heating and plumbing engineer,” the latter with a $300,000 Lamborghini—I thought there was only one British car I should take along. An all-electric Rolls-Royce Spectre.

Crosthwaite-Eyre was immediately deployed to try talking me out of the Spectre and into a “traditional” supercar. But I’d previously driven Spectre in anger, in a Rolls-Royce sort of way, and knew that its freight-train torque, 584 hp, four-wheel-steering, physics-defying cornering capability, and brakes seemingly seconded from a Boeing 777 meant that progress would be better than brisk.

Crosthwaite-Eyre eventually capitulated after agreements were reached that I would hang at the back, and me insisting the group should go ahead if the Spectre was left behind or ran out of electricity. Did its battery run flat, or leave me as red-faced as its “Magma” color scheme? Keep reading . . .

So how does Club GT work? Free “Enthusiast” membership allows limited event access. “Adventurer” status costs around $1,340 per year (plus taxes), and means, amongst other perks, getting priority when booking limited-numbers events. Participants pay for travel to and from adventures, although Club GT will arrange everything from commercial flights to private jets, and organize transport of cars—though at an additional cost, but part of the club’s “the answer’s yes, now what’s the question?” philosophy. All members need to think about is enjoying the drives and fast-developing friendships.

Group events usually tend to involve a degree of herding cats, but not with those from Club GT. When Giblin says, “we go at 9 a.m.”, it happens. Yet it’s relaxed. Days run to schedule, but there’s plenty of contingencies ready to be rolled out. Things do go wrong, but regulars say it’s almost exclusively down to matters out of Club GT’s control.

“I don’t know how they do it, or who they know, but their problem-solving is amazing,” says one driver. “On one [European] trip, a member’s [supercar] developed a leak. The Club GT guys got straight on to the factory to try to get the parts delivered overnight to fix it, as they’ve done before, but the car was so exclusive, the parts weren’t readily available. So they found another [same make supercar] in a neighboring country, and had it brought in overnight. There was obviously a cost, but the delighted guy was simply handed the keys at breakfast.”

The Yorkshire Grand Tour cost $7,860 a head, while forthcoming trips to the Italian Dolomites, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia start at $21,100 per person. Then there’s the foray into Belgium, which includes a day on the legendary Spa-Francorchamps racetrack and starts at $10,550 per person. Yet the most exotic is the Safari Porsches in Namibia, priced at roughly $63,000 for two, plus flights.

The Spectre isn’t suited to every such event, but did it get left behind across the Dales? “I was really concerned for all sorts of reasons,” said Crosthwaite-Eyre. “But the Spectre was amazing. It more than kept up, didn’t run out of battery, was perfect for the roads we were on, and it’s fair to say some of the other guys were surprised, even amused, by its pace.”

Even without the Spectre, these drives are clearly powerful grin generators that amp up the camaraderie already intrinsic to car culture—doing so one scenic and amenity-laden leg at a time.

Click here for more photos from Club GT’s Yorkshire Grand Tour.