Take a James Bond girl, a double Formula One World Champion, the mayor of Moscow, a fashion mogul, and the boss of Europe’s biggest car manufacturer, season with a handful of international businessmen and sprinkle with a few politicians, stir in 375 of the most sensational vintage racecars in the world, and what have you got? The 2008 Mille Miglia Storica, of course.
It’s more a happening that has become show business on wheels and less a serious race against the clock!.. Millions lined the route of the 81st Mille Miglia in various states of excitement, keen to watch the spectacular old cars rumble by. But they were equally keen on star gazing, trying to recognize the many famous faces this remarkable event attracts.
A parade of grumbling, growling, gurgling old timers that had set the hearts of millions racing from 1927 until 1957, sped from Brescia to Rome and back, manhandled by some of the greatest racing drivers the world has ever known. Today’s Mille Miglia is a historic one, in which the well-to-do drive the race’s old veterans at a fairly sedate pace over one of the old routes of “the most beautiful race in the world,” as Enzo Ferrari once called the Mille Miglia. And he should know. Cars bearing his name won it eight times between 1947 and 1957, not to mention the many prewar victories of his Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeos.
The Mille Miglia Storica is no longer a race of speed but of regularity, for which its drivers use all sorts of satellite exotica to ensure they arrive at the 49 checkpoints on the dot, not a tenth of a second too early, nor a tenth too late.
Like the old days, Alfa Romeos dominated the Mille Miglia results in 2008. The winner was a racing-red, 1928, Alfa 6C 1500 Super Sport driven by seasoned crew Luciano (last year’s victor) and Antonio Viario. Second was the Argentinean pair, Fernando Sanchez Zinny and Juan Bertolomè, in their 1930 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Grand Sport, and 3rd a comparative stripling of a 1938 BMW 328 driven by Italians Gianmaria Aghem and Rosella Conti. Alfa even won the Manufacturers’ prize with a handsome 84,222 points for their 1st, 2nd, and 5th places, with Bugatti trailing in 2nd place, Aston Martin 3rd, BMW 4th, and Healey 5th.
Photo: Alfa Romeo
And, as always, the race took place in a good-natured carnival atmosphere that even heavy rain could not dampen, all overseen by what the Italians call the madrina (godmother) of the event, the glamorous Italian and Hollywood actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta of James Bond film fame. One of the Formula One stars were double world champion Mika Hakkinen, the fashion mogul Patrizio Bertelli, managing director of Prada, and the boss of Europe’s biggest car manufacturer Ferdinand Piesch of Volkswagen-Audi (he drove Adolf Hitler’s private VW Beetle). But there were more, many more. Like Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the prince of Bavaria, one of endurance racing’s greats Jochen Mass, Mille Miglia veteran 80-year-old Gino Munaron, ex-Ferrari driver Jean Alesi, actors, actresses, singers, and TV personalities.
This year’s event was organized for the first time by the Mac Events, Meet Communications, and Sanremo Rally consortium, who took over from MARVA, the local Brescia team that resurrected and ran the Mille Miglia Storica for its first 25 years. The route was Ferrara for the first overnight stop, then on to Rome, where the cars were permitted to parade through the Eternal City’s streets for the first time and even the Coliseum was illuminated in their honor. Then it was back to Brescia, hitting Siena, Florence, Bologna, Modena, Tazio Nuvolari’s birthplace of Mantua, and into Brescia again. The whole thing took three days, during which the crews enjoyed the finest foods, wines, and hotels that a culinary paradise like Italy could offer.
By Robert Newman
