A friend who owns a 1991 Porsche 944 sometimes drives the Toronto Lap late at night. Counter-clockwise around the city, he follows the Gardiner, Don Valley Parkway, Highway 401 and Highway 427 for no reason other than to enjoy the drive and his old but perfect car.

Enjoy is not a word most Torontonians associate with these highways. Fear, loathing and a sustained rage are more common sentiments. At night, though, we can drive free — like in the 1950s before we reached “peak car” — circling the city, feeling the curves and bumps at speed, choosing a lane because it looks good, not because we think it moves faster.

Every day, thousands of Torontonians do battle with each other on these roads. Few places, save for the Air Canada Centre, boast such shared experience for so many. And yet, on the road, everyone is cocooned in their own car. Some are tethered; they may be listening to the same local radio station, but with satellite radio’s lack of terrestrial connection, even this tenuous connection is fading.

Another friend would put his young baby into a car seat and drive the Lap, lulling him to sleep as the car rump-a-bumped over expansion joints. All cities have a lap and some, like London or Washington, have ring roads or beltways.

Toronto’s is different. It meanders through the city and its topography, often in beautiful ways. It’s more Le Mans than Indy 500.

To drive the Lap, you can start anywhere, and go any direction.

Begin downtown and there’s the opportunity to fly through the crystal skyscrapers twice. Even as it sheds chunks of concrete, as if in solidarity with Quebec overpasses, the Gardiner is as close to The Jetsons’ sky-highways as we may ever get.

Up the Don Valley, the Lap is at its most verdant and smooth, with long curves that hug ravine walls and dark masses of forest out of which sprout the incandescent towers of Flemington and Thorncliffe. The interchange at Highways 401 and the Don Valley Parkway is one of the biggest in the city. Much of Toronto’s financial district could fit here. In David Cronenberg’s 1996 film Crash — a gem of mid-90s Toronto settings and car eroticism —James Spader’s character lives in a high-rise building overlooking this interchange, watching the traffic through binoculars.

Cities are about speed and movement, and these highways are where we can see and feel it most intensely.

The 401 — or, as traffic reporters say, “across the top” — is often called the busiest bit of highway in North America. More than 420,000 cars a day can pass through the segment between Weston Road and the 400.

It doesn’t quite hug the whole city, but you’ll feel Toronto’s immense size when driving the Lap. It takes about 40 minutes to drive the 66 kilometre loop at or near the speed limit.

But for nighthawks with a little extra gas to burn, the Lap is what a Sunday country drive is to everybody else: a last romantic gasp of car culture.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef

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