Luxury Car Rental in Stintino

Stintino was founded in 1885, when the fishing families of Asinara were resettled on this finger of land between two natural harbours. From its past of tuna fisheries and lateen sails the village has kept a quiet elegance: no see-and-be-seen piazzettas, no designer windows — just low pastel houses, wooden fishing boats at their moorings and a light that turns to copper at the end of the day. This is the luxury of a place with nothing to prove, which is precisely why a serious car can be enjoyed here without an audience.

The catch is that Stintino sits at the end of a peninsula: La Pelosa, Capo Falcone, Le Saline and the ferries to Asinara are scattered along kilometres of mistral-swept coastline. Walking everywhere is not realistic, and transfers tie you to someone else's timetable. The right car — ideally an open one — turns every journey into the best part of the day.

Alghero Fertilia Airport is 48 km away, around 50 minutes on fast, flowing roads that cut across the Nurra plain. You can collect the car at the terminal and drive north yourself, or — the option our guests tend to choose here — be chauffeured up and find the car already parked outside your hotel, at your villa gates or on the quay of the Marina di Stintino if you arrive by sea.

Everything is arranged before you travel: our WhatsApp concierge agrees the delivery point and time with you, prepares the paperwork and stays on hand throughout your stay; alternatively, there is the enquiry form on our site. Requirements and conditions are provided at the quotation stage. With 27 destinations and 3 airports served across Sardinia, a drop-off in another part of the island can be arranged in the same conversation.

The SP34 from Porto Torres to Stintino is the perfect overture: the Gulf of Asinara stays on your right for kilometre after kilometre, past lagoons where flamingos gather and dry-stone walls that run down to the sea. Ease off as you reach Le Saline — the white-pebble beach fringed with junipers deserves a brief stop, even if only for a coffee with your wheels almost on the waterline.

Then there is the SP42, the "road of the Two Seas": a few kilometres where the peninsula narrows so much that you glimpse water on both sides of the straights. Drive it in the late afternoon, roof down, and finish at Capo Falcone: from the lookout beneath the Spanish tower the view glides over La Pelosa, the islet of the Torre della Pelosa and, beyond it, the whole of Asinara. It is the most photographed sunset in the north-west, and it counts double from behind a steering wheel.

La Pelosa itself calls for a little strategy: in summer access is capped and must be booked, so the moment to go is early morning, when the sand is still untouched and the water has that improbable turquoise that barely looks Mediterranean. For Asinara, leave the car at the Marina di Stintino and take the boat across to the National Park: white donkeys, deserted coves and a former maximum-security prison tell the story of an island that resembles nowhere else.

Open sky rules here: a Ferrari Portofino M is the natural choice for the road of the Two Seas, its V8 filling the straights between the two gulfs and its roof vanishing in seconds as the light turns golden. If you prefer a more discreet kind of elegance, the Porsche range offers coupés and cabriolets ideally suited to these fast, clean roads.

Travelling with family, cool boxes and beach kit? Think SUV: a Lamborghini Urus shrugs off the final rough stretches down to the coves and swallows everything you bring, without giving up its supercar soul. To find your way around the open-top options, we have put together a guide to the perfect convertibles for the Sardinian coast.