motoring T
ille iglia
The Greatest Car Rally in the World
hose two words are so onomatopoeic, four consonants which evoke the greatest car race in the world, the thousand mile rally around Italy. The quintessential race in a country that can rightly claim the highest passion for the motorcar. The home of the “red” car, Ferrari, Lambhorgini and Maserati!
The Mille Miglia starts in Brescia in the north of Italy, descends down the east coast to Rome over two days, and then ends with a single day dash from Rome back up to Brescia on the west coast. It is a magnificent cortege of the greatest classic road cars ever built. To enter, the cars must have either been in the original Mille Miglia, or a car of sporting history listed in Palmares Winner’s Lists of international significance.
This is about as exclusive as it gets even before the costs of the race and the cars come into it.
I went to race two Bentley “Blowers” (1929 & 1930) and the 1954 Bentley R Type Continental with friends at Bentley Motors Ltd. James Bond drove a 1930’s “Blower” Bentley in Casino Royale, Live and Let Die and Moonraker. The Bentley “Blower” gets its name from the supercharger mounted at the front of the radiator. Only four team cars were developed for racing thanks to the persistent efforts of Bentley Boy Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin who convinced Woolf Barnato into fitting a supercharger to enhance performance with the goal being to win Le Mans again.
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surreymagazineonline.co.uk
On the first day the cars are registered in a big warehouse in Brescia resulting in the grandest cornucopia of high end super-cars in one place ever. It is a race aficionado’s dream, you do not know where to look next. I could not help thinking of a twist on the film “The Italian Job”, only this time they steal the cars themselves, a much bigger haul than the bullion they stole in the movie.
It is our own Stirling Moss that holds the race record at 10 h 07' 48” in 1955, an average speed of 100 mph, which is simply incredible when
you take the mountain roads into consideration. Stirling Moss’ navigator was the journalist Denis Jenkinson who concocted a brilliant navigation instrument not unlike a loo roll in a metal box, with all the turns and directions marked down, more practical in an open car than the Tulip maps used now.
On day one I drove in the Bentley “Blower” with the president of the Bentley Drivers club, a thoroughly English gent and great company, to Piazza Paulo VI, where our cars were to be parked for the initial media
By Yves de Contades
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