|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Road Rally Italia: Mille Miglia Redux
| Article
# : |
20501 |
|
|
Section : |
LIFE
|
| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1992 |
1,916 Words |
| Author
: |
Harry Newton
After four decades in the automotive industry, Harry Newton
now writes about the cars and people he has met along the
way. He contributes to automobile magazines in Europe and the
United States. |
Brescia's Piazza de Vittoria is alive with anticipation. Spectators strain to catch a glimpse of a famous driver. Perhaps a Gigi Villoresi, an Olivier Gendebien, or a Stirling Moss. Reporters and photographers are enthusiastic despite the steady rain. Nearly a thousand of them have come from around the world to chronicle a road rally that reverberates with the history of motor racing. And this morning they join a knowledgeable and festive crowd that has gathered to watch more than three hundred magnificent racing machines undergo final preparations and inspections before the big event.
It's race-day morning at the Mille Miglia, a road rally that harkens back to an era when the Mille Miglia qua road race once occupied the heights of racing grandeur. The Mille Miglia (Italian for "one thousand miles") was Italy's most famous road race and was grouped with the 24 Hours of LeMans and Sicily's Targa Florio at the pinnacle of automotive competition.
Every May, vintage speedsters from around the world and out of the past come to reenact that incredible test of man and machine that was last conducted as a world championship road race thirty-five years ago. For three days, deep-pocketed auto enthusiasts--many from as far away as the United States, Japan, Australia, and South America--will take their expensive vintage automobiles through some of the most scenic and significant regions of Italy, over some of the most challenging roads imaginable. Even as a retrospective, the Mille Miglia is an automotive event that has lost none of its mystique.
First Run
The first Mille Miglia was run in 1927. The winner completed the course in just over twenty hours, at an average speed of forty-eight miles per hour. Fifty-four of the seventy-seven starters were still running at the finish, and the first three finishers were Brescia-built OMs (Officine Meccaniche). Tazio Nuvolari, Italy's most fabled racing driver, finished tenth at the wheel of a Bianchi.
By contrast, and as a testimonial to road improvements as well as mechanical progress, the 1957 Mille Miglia was won by Piero Taruffi's Ferrari in less than ten and one-half hours. And that is not the record! Two years earlier, Englishman Stirling Moss, one of only two non-Italians ever to win the race, completed the one thousand miles in ten hours, seven minutes, and forty-eight seconds. The Mercedes-Benz 300SLR that carried Moss and his navigator, Dennis Jenkinson, to victory is now displayed at
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
