The Mille Miglia – An Opera

With flashing precision, my memory recaptures exactly the milli-second that motor racing entered my life. It was reading a three-month-old account of the 1953 Mille Miglia in a copy of Motor Trend.

In 1953, all the new Alfa Romeo 6C 3000 CMs had led the 1000-mile thrash round Italy, and after Kling had retired, proving the old adage that “he who leads at Rome never wins the Mille Miglia” to be true, Fangio had pushed his Alfa….the Disco Volante…into the lead. Fangio was flying until he came into one of the control stops with a broken right steering arm and with 200 miles to go, dashed on with only one wheel steering to try to hold the lead.