128 miles along the Pacific Coast in a BMW 128i.
Some cities - like New York, the enormous metropolis explored elsewhere in this issue - sprawl endlessly into suburbia over dozens and dozens of miles. San Francisco is different. It ends abruptly. Head north over the Golden Gate Bridge, and within hundreds of yards, you’ll find some of the most picturesque, lightly trafficked roads in the world.
You’ve probably heard of California’s State Route 1, which is called the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California. North of San Francisco, Route 1 is called the Shoreline Highway, and it’s here that we’ve planned our day trip. Whether heading north or south, there’s no car that could better serve as an accomplice in the conquering of Route 1 than BMW’s brand-new coupe whose name is of the same numeric value. The new 1-series might be sized like a city car, but it shares lots of components with its larger sibling, the 3-series, which means that the 1 carves through corners like the world’s most involving sports cars. Whereas most city cars serve only to facilitate movement from point A to point B, our 128i coupe will happily scream its way through thousands of corners from Fort Point to Point Arena. How far will the trip take us? You guessed it - it’s 128 miles north along Route 1.
The resplendent Golden Gate Bridge is the northern escape route out of San Francisco, and it carries two roadways - U.S. Route 101 and California Route 1. Fort Point is located just beneath the southern end of the bridge, and we pass directly over it, heading out of the city on a cold morning before sunrise. What we can’t see in the darkness below is a fort, erected after the 1849 gold rush to protect the bay from hostile ships. It wasn’t the first military establishment built here; the Spanish constructed a fort in the same spot more than fifty years earlier, but its adobe structure couldn’t survive the area’s wet weather. True to form, it’s raining as we cross the span.
Just a few miles north of the Golden Gate, Route 1 splits off from U.S. 101 and becomes the Shoreline Highway, leaving all traces of the city behind. Sidewalks and streetlights are replaced by hairpin turns illuminated by the BMW’s swiveling HID headlights. And, thanks to the Bay Area’s many microclimates, rain has already given way to clear skies and dry pavement as we dive deeper into Marin County.
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