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Cross 30 inches of water or ascend a 60-degree slope, but make it luxurious. That’s the objective of Mil-Spec Automotive, the brainchild of CEO Adam Mitchell, president Chris Van Scyoc and CIO Ian Broekman, three midwestern men capable of restoring a quarter-million-dollar, military-grade Humvee, but each of whom fail to meet the age required to hire a rental car. Each […]
Elite Traveler’s motoring writer Alexandra Cheney takes you on a journey through the best luxury cars on the market at the moment, from state-of-the-art hypercars to the most spacious sedans. Undoubtedly, the premium luxury segment is in a decisive moment. Stricter global emissions standards continue to force automotive manufacturers to refocus their research and design energies into electric and fuel […]
Running longitudinally from the town of Napa through Yountville, Oakville and Rutherford to St Helena in the north, Napa Valley stretches roughly 30 miles, although even the locals have an elastic definition of “the valley.” The global importance of its $34 billion wine industry, however, is indisputable. Drawing world-class chefs, oenophiles and wellness enthusiasts since the 1970s, today this viticulture […]
The browns, greens and blacks of the layered hills and coast-hugging roads of Big Sur brilliantly offset the deep blues and bright whites of the vast Pacific Ocean and its crashing waves. It’s a familiar scene to those acquainted with California’s Central Coast, as much a state of mind as a locale. Enter the A8, Audi’s flagship sedan, which matches […]
Hailed as the chef who reinvented French cuisine, Jean-Georges Vongerichten sat down with Alexandra Cheney to ruminate on sustainable eating, meticulousness and why there’s more to fine dining than Michelin stars. There’s a finite precision to everything in Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s orbit. Some of it reflects his upbringing: He was raised in a two-story house dating to the 1780s with his […]
Words like sleek, stunning and extraordinary come easily to the lips of those viewing Speedtail, McLaren’s low-drag, 1,035-horsepower, gas-electric hybrid powertrain Ultimate Series vehicle. Its list of lengthy superlatives include: first-ever Hyper-GT and most aerodynamically efficient, perfectly symmetrical and fastest-accelerating McLaren. A proclamation: The Speedtail is a testament to the current and future technological accomplishments at McLaren. Speedtail clocks zero […]
This story originally appeared in the January/February 2019 issue of Elite Traveler. Utility vehicles continue to gain momentum as the world’s favored family car, so automobile manufacturers remain resolute in diversifying the sector. A trio of first drives demonstrate the breadth and depth of possibility; from impressive off-road capabilities to bespoke refinements, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar and Bentley are on a mission to […]
This story originally appeared in the November/December 2018 issue of Elite Traveler. The hills are alive with the sound of 900 newton meters of torque. A curt pop-pop-pop of the exhaust gives way to a throaty rumble as Aston Martin’s new flagship 715-horsepower DBS Superleggera settles into its Alpine atmosphere. On the Austrian border some 2,297 ft above sea level in […]
This story originally appeared in the November/December 2018 issue of Elite Traveler. The sunlight at the top of the world penetrates the clouds much like a polar icebreaker relentlessly cuts through the frozen ocean. At 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, zero degrees Celsius feels balmy. There’s not a breath of wind. The crystalline landscape appears petrified, that is, until […]
This story originally appeared in the November/December 2018 issue of Elite Traveler. Originally inhabited by the Kumeyaay Native Americans, San Diego violently changed hands several times throughout history; first by colonizing Spaniards in 1774, then by Mexicans in 1821 during the Mexican War of Independence and finally by early American settlers in 1848, after Alta California joined the United States thanks […]
