It steers with heft but accuracy, rides with a firm composure, and has digital dials and a big touchscreen. If it weren’t for radio stations featuring adverts for nasal vacuums (“clean nose, healthy life!”) and ‘prostate secrets’ (.com!), and playing songs like ‘I’m rednecker than you’, you could almost convince yourself it’s a European experience.
The roads, the space and the emptiness are all pure Americana, though. A wide, sweeping set of bends leads downhill towards the Extraterrestrial Highway, whose quirky, digital-font signage is covered in stickers from all parts of the world.
For all of the seriousness of there being an actual secret active military airbase nearby, they ham up the alien mythology with a knowing wink. When, in 2019, there was an “Area 51 Raid” organised online on the basis that “they can’t shoot all of us”, additional policing was drafted in.
But ultimately the event had all the threat of a village fete, the most risky activity being selfie-taking in front of the ‘don’t take photos here’ signs outside the razor-wired gate, to the shrugging permission of by-standing guards.
So we go too, off the main highway and onto the dirt track, which you don’t strictly need a pick-up’s 4×4 system to navigate, but which isn’t unhelpful in deeper sand. One suspects this is as hard as most Santa Cruzes will be worked but there’s plenty of terrain like this in the US, and it deals with it nicely, slipping around entertainingly.
Do they notice us with their spy drones and seismometers? We’re probably not worth the trouble. On an average day, there must be a dozen cars and tours that turn up to peer over the gate at a remote sentry camera, which is all overlooked by a white pick-up on a low hillside – ‘camo dude’ presumably aboard.
We stay a few minutes. On the return leg, a white Chevy Suburban with darkened windows passes us but, let’s face it, it’s more likely that a shift manager than Paul the alien is on board.
Back on the road, we swing a left towards the restaurant, and then drive on another six hours towards California, through the desolation of Death Valley, past an aircraft graveyard, and eventually out onto the busy highway that runs down into Los Angeles.
This is a cooler, more intriguing, end to Route 66. And an interesting car to do it in. I check my phone to see if any pictures have been deleted. No. No, they haven’t been.