The 2014 running of the famed Mille Miglia rally took place 15-18 May in Italy on the historic roads from Brescia, through Padova, Rome, Siena, Pisa and Bologna, before returning to cross the finish line in Brescia. A field of 435 historic automobiles built between 1927 and 1957 challenged each other and themselves in the modern revival that celebrates the “finest race in the world”, as Enzo Ferrari famously called it.
Jaguar Heritage Racing fielded ten of the marque’s most celebrated 1950s models in the 2014 Mille Miglia. Jay Leno and Ian Callum drove the ex-Sir James Scott-Douglas 1951 Jaguar XK 120 roadster, raced as part of the Ecurie Ecosse team in period.
Ex-Jaguar Le Mans, World Sports Prototype Championship winner and Formula 1 driver Martin Brundle paired up with ex-Formula 1 racer Bruno Senna behind the wheel of the the ‘Long Nose’ Jaguar D-type, the penultimate example built, registered 393 RW, as this legendary Jaguar model celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2014.
Bentley brought the 1930 4.5-Litre Le Mans ‘Team Car’ once owned by Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin, while BMW entered the 328 Mille Miglia Touring Coupe that won the 1940 Mille Miglia in the hands of overall victory for Fritz Huschke von Hanstein and Walter Baumer.
Alfa Romeo lined up three cars picked from the Alfa Romeo Museum – two pre-war models, a 1930 6C 1750 Gran Sport and a 1928 6C 1500 Super Sport and a 1954 2000 Sportiva. The Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 GS, bodied by Zagato, finished second overall at this year’s event. The Italian automaker triumphed no less than eleven times in the original Mille Miglia, a record that can never been beaten.
Given the strong field of 435 historic cars at the 2014 Mille Miglia, we ended up with not enough time to post all of the images provided by Julien Mahiels in our original story. Therefore, in addition to Julien’s “Report and Photos“, we offer the following gallery of images that are too stunning to not share. We split up Julien’s pictures into two galleries. The first gallery starting below features our favorite images, all displayed in the full-width view of Sports Car Digest, while the second gallery can be found on the last page of the article and gives a comprehensive view of all the photographs. To see more from Julien, visit julienmahiels.net.
Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Two
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Three
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Four
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Five
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Six
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Seven
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Eight
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Nine
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Ten
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Eleven
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Twelve
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Thirteen
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Fourteen
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Featured Picture Gallery Page Fifteen
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Mille Miglia 2014 – Main Picture Gallery (click image for larger picture and description)
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[Source: Mille Miglia; photos: Julien Mahiels]
Open Letter to the Organizing Committee of the 1000 Miglia s.l.r. and the Automobile Club of Brescia CEO Marco Makaus:
Dear Mr. Makaus:
The fine work of your committee in organizing a successful 2014 Mille Miglia deserves a tribute, a salute and an observation about recent years past.
I have personally raced and followed the course of the Mille Miglia three years now…2011, 2012 and 2014 and consider myself a well-informed observer and probably the American with the most personal experience with the Mille Miglia in recent years.
In a well-circulated American auto enthusiast blog in May of 2012 I wrote of the “Germanization” of the Mille Miglia in 2012 and how I felt that 15 Mercedes Benz 300SLs, a dozen or so BMW 328s, a constant visual barrage of the three-pointed star and BMW’s familiar ‘propeller’ logos, not to mention the 50,000 waving Mercedes-Benz flags passed out along the circuit, the preponderance of Mercedes-Benz and BMW banners and car exhibits…..and the out and out belligerence of the menacing German manufacturer Support Cars …and the collective impression that the Germans had ‘bought’ the Mille Miglia.
You responded to my remarks in partial defense of this display and commented that I would be delighted to see changes made to the 2013 Mille Miglia and should withhold judgment until then.
I chose not to attend in 2013 for personal reasons but I did race the course with the 431 entrants this year as a member of the media and I am pleased to say that your committee has corrected the overall net impression that the “Mercedes-Benz Mille Miglia” (a.k.a “MBMM”) of 2012 had in fact been returned to a more normal, fair and balanced “Internationalization”.
Understanding that a huge amount of money had been pledged by Mercedes-Benz to lead the sponsorship of the event…and that other manufacturers and sponsors had passed on their opportunity to sponsor the event themselves… I feel you have successfully controlled the arrogance of the German manufacturers and generally returned the event to that of a balanced world-class event supported by a wider class of sponsors who did not attempt to overpower each other with their respective messages throughout the 1100 miles of the race.
In part, you were responsive to those who agreed with me.
You faced fiscal realities involved in controlling and balancing competing sponsorship messages. I was particularity gratified to see that Alfa Romeo had stepped forward to become a major sponsor…instead of a more remote and distant participant.
I look forward to the 2015 Mille Miglia with more confidence that your “Internationalization” message will be further applied to the event and that the parade of the German car manufacturers will be more tightly controlled for the public relations benefit of all of the other marques presented.
Please pass my congratulatory remarks along to your associates and committee members in Brescia.
Ciao,
Robert Little
New York
Stunning photos — some of the best I have ever seen of any vintage event. Many thanks!
The best set of photos I’ve ever seen on this site, excellent! One suggestion, push the shutter speed up one notch next time and make it A+++
Julien – when it doesn’t seem the photos could get any better each year, you outdo yourself! At the risk of being melodramatic, these MM pics brought a tear to my eye with their beauty and the stimulus to my imagination, smelling Castrol fumes, stuck thousands of miles away from such an event!!
The combination of incredible vintage cars, the breathtaking urban and rural settings of Italy and the overall fabulous quality of the photography is to be commended….a really impressive photo grouping!
Super images — they capture beautifully the cars, the Italian scenery, and the sense of motion in the Mille Miglia. Great fun to look through all of them.
Fantastic photos, a shame the first cars were missed 🙁
its been hard to find car 14!