Oh, to be in Rome on a spring evening when the Mille Miglia roars down the tree-shaded avenues and through the narrow, echoing lanes. That's what happened to a good friend of mine who was on a work assignment and, as luck would have it, witnessed the arrival of the cars on Thursday evening, May 17, when the 2018 running of the Mille Miglia threaded through the city, roughly halfway through its thousand mile loop around Italy, starting and ending in Brescia. The modern event is run as a road rally, making it safer and more manageable than the thousand-mile endurance race around Italy on public roads from 1927 to 1957. Cars which would have been available during that period, as well as any that actually participated, are eligible. The result is that many apply, but hundreds don't make the cut; this year the organizers accepted 450 cars out of a whopping 725 applicants. Still, there's an eclectic and democratic sampling of cars to watch. Beyond the expected exotic Alfa Romeos, Bugattis, Lancias, Mercedes and Ferraris, there were tiny MGs, spindly Fiats, a 1929 Chrysler like one that raced at Le Mans, and a cushy 1956 Thunderbird brought by an Italian team. My friend Jonathan was lucky to be there when some of the great classics from motor racing's heroic age hit the streets. Because there were so many, we're only going to make it through the letter B in today's post...
Alfa Romeo 6C 1750
There was a flotilla of Alfa Romeos from the late 1920s through the 1930s, the first golden era of Alfa's racing sports cars, and an astonishing thirteen of these were the immortal 6C 1750 model like the one above, and with varieties of bodywork by the likes of Zagato and Castagna.
Alfa Romeo 8C 2300, 1931
The Superleggera Touring-bodied spider above was one of a quartet of the 8C 2300 series which ran this year's event. This English team entry appears to be the long wheelbase model. Like the 6C 1750, the 8C featured twin overhead camshafts and a supercharger. On the 8C, there were twin tandem four-cylinder blocks with the gear drive for the camshafts between the blocks. Alfa was a pioneer in engineering these features, as well as in using light alloy in cylinder heads, and later in engine blocks. Our photographer was riveted by the aircraft sound of these Alfa engines, overlaid as it was with the whine of their Roots-type superchargers...
Alfa Romeo 6C 1750
Alfa Romeo 6C 1750
Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 Botticella, 1936
This 8C 2900 Botticella was a competitor in the original Mille Miglia series, back in the 1930s when a guy named Enzo Ferrari was running Alfa's racing operation. That's the reason for the prancing horse insignia on the hood; it stands for Scuderia Ferrari (Ferrari's stables). All 8C 2900 Alfas (there were A and B versions, long and short chassis variants) are among the holy grails of classic sports cars, as they were derived from Grand Prix racing cars in their engine and chassis design. But the Boticella is even more of a thinly-disguised racing car than the others, because there's almost no disguise except for those cycle-type fenders and the headlights. It had also appeared in the 2014 Mille Miglia rally, and made a lot of spectators happy then too.
Alvis Speed 20 SB, 1934
This Alvis was the lone entrant from fans of the Red Triangle, and was a second series model which added independent front suspension to virtues of the previous SA model, which included a 2.5 liter inline six with triple SU carburetors, and rubber engine and transmission mounts, of which Alvis was a pioneer. A central lubrication system provided oiling for multiple points of the chassis through a series of tubes, but the SB still retained mechanically-actuated brakes.
Blue Train Bentley Special
Things are not always what they appear at vintage car events, and while the vast, grumbling dignity of this Bentley calls up visions of the Blue Train Bentley Speed Six that won a race from Calais to the French Riviera with that train in 1930, it's a reproduction built around a later engine from the post-Rolls Royce takeover period, and in fact the post-WWII period. Still, the components were built long before the cutoff year for the MM reenactments. In any case, it turns out that the real Blue Train car was not the Speed Six with Gurney Nutting coupe bodywork which served as the model for this car, but a four-door saloon by Mulliner. An American collector now owns both real Blue Train claimants, so he has bragging rights to the victorious car, no matter what...
BMW 328
BMW, an aircraft and then farm equipment manufacturer, got its start in making cars the year after the first Mille Miglia by licensing production of England's tiny Austin 7. By 1933, they had released a six-cylinder car of their own design, and followed this with the BMW 328 sports models which competed in the race before WWII. There were three of the light, rounded two-liter 328s in this year's run, and one of them was captured as a streamlined blur.
BNC 527 Grand Sport, 1927
This tidy yellow car with the swept-back radiator was less familiar than the Alfas or BMW, but I recognized it from my childhood copy of William Boddy's Sports Car Pocketbook. Boddy was somewhat puzzled that everyone back then (the 1950s) replied with "Bollack, Netter et Cie" whenever he mentioned BNC, but after all, that's who made the car...in Paris, mostly for the 1,100 cc Voiturette racing class and with an overhead-valve Ruby engine, sometimes with a Cozette supercharger, and with 4 forward speeds. There were a few bigger BNCs before the company collapsed due to the Great Depression, but it was the spry little 527 and its variants that brought the car its brief moment in the spotlight. Two showed up for the MM, including the blue Monza model below...
BNC 527 Monza, 1927
Bugatti, on the other hand, seems never to have left the glare of the spotlight, at least among car enthusiasts, even though no cars were made with that nameplate from 1956 to 1991, and the postwar production by the Bugatti family amounted to only about 10 road cars, a couple of mid-engined Type 251 racers, and a prototype or two. No matter, the name had enough of what is now called "brand recognition" to spur a revival attempt by Romano Artoli in 1991-95 (less than 140 cars) and then Volkswagen Group (from 2005 to the present). Opinions vary about the results of those revivals, but it can be safely said that none of the new Bugattis sound like the old ones. Bystanders have often compared the sound of vintage Bugattis to the amplified zip of ripping cloth...
Bugatti Type 40, 1927
The little blue Bugatti above returned to the scene of its 2013 victory, when it was entered by an Argentinian team. The inline four cylinder features 3 valves per cylinder operated by a single overhead camshaft, and in original form with twin Weber carburetors developed about 70 horses, remarkable for a 1.5 liter engine in this era.
Bugatti Type 40
Nowadays the Bugatti name conjures up visions of a thousand-horsepower road-going cruise missile costing well into seven figures; at least it does that for the millennial generation. The original Bugattis built by Ettore Bugatti and his team of artisan mechanics in Alsace Lorraine were smallish, lightweight cars aimed at making lots of power from small displacement engines. There were exceptions like the gigantic Type 41 Royale (a commercial failure) and the 4.8 liter Type 50, but the Bugattis that made the company's reputation in road racing were the small ones. True to that tradition, while there were no less than 15 Bugattis among this year's MM entrants, none had an engine larger than the 2.3 liter straight 8 in the Type 35. One happy fact of historic racing reenactments is that they remind us that things like concerns for efficiency, lightness, simplicity and engineering integrity are not new, and that they are still valid today. As is the idea of having some fun...
Photo Credit:
All photos were generously provided by LT Jonathan D. Asbury USN.
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