Roadside Attraction: Mille Miglia 2019

In these dark days when people are advised to avoid gatherings and to stay indoors except for essential trips, and the United States has overtaken Italy in the grim statistic of people attacked by a relentless, microscopic enemy, it was a reminder of better times to find these photos of crowds gathered on Italian streets to cheer on teams taking a decidedly non-essential trip. This was the Mille Miglia reenactment that took place on a thousand miles of Italy's most scenic roads and streets last May...

This Mille Miglia Storica is a "regularity race" (or rally) commemorating the original flat-out road race, run from 1927 through 1938 and again in 1940, and after WWII from 1947 through 1957. These reenactments began in 1977, and were limited to cars which were eligible to compete in the races from from 1927 to the end in 1957. That last actual road race was plagued by fatal accidents, which coming so soon after the catastrophic 1955 Le Mans, prompted Italian authorities to abandon the event.  Examples of eligible cars include the mid-1950s Mercedes Benz 300SL above, and the 1955 Lancia* Aurelia Spider America below.   Alberto Ascari won the 1954 MM in his Lancia D24 Spider, and Stirling Moss with Denis Jenkinson took perhaps the most famous victory in 1955 in a Mercedes 300SLR.  In both cases, the cars were complex, single-purpose road racers rather than the road-going sports cars pictured here. 

Also in the category of "dual purpose sports car" (a phrase which popped up frequently in the Road & Track mags this writer long ago devoured when avoiding homework) was the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint which appeared in 1954, and put Alfa Romeo on map, especially in the USA, as a maker of affordable cars with advanced engineering. The Sprint coupe, below, was designed by Franco Scaglione* and bodied by Bertone, and it launched their expansion into the area of large scale series production, a market also occupied by Pinin Farina, which built the Giulietta Spiders...

...in a style related to that of their bodies for the Lancia Aurelia.  PF built both the Aurelia B20 coupes and the B24 Spider Americas.  The blue #375 below is a twin to the black #367 above, but you can't have too many Aurelia Spiders, so here it is.  Lancia built 240 of this B24 Spider America with side curtains and GM Motorama-style wraparound windshield. After that, they switched to a Farina design with wind-up side windows and less wrap to the windshield, much like PF's Giulietta Spider.

The crowd-pleasing Lancia Lambda Torpedo, built from 1922 through 1931, was a real pioneer. Low-slung when most cars still looked like carriages in search of a horse, it was the first production car with a load-bearing unitized body, the first one with a V4 engine design, and one of the first with independent front suspension.  For a relatively costly car, it was also a popular one; over 13,000 were built in 9 series, with Lancia engineers constantly making detail improvements to engine, gearboxes (4 speeds by 1925) and body designs. This obsession with detail made for great cars, but small profit margins... 

Below, an OSCA* from the late 1940s swings past the crowd, its "actual size" occupants providing a sense of scale; these early 1,100cc four-cylinder products of the Maserati brothers were tiny. Early cars like this cycle-fendered example had single overhead-cam engines, while later ones ran twin-cams, and a few cars were built near the end of the run with desmodromic valves.  Sir Stirling Moss has one of those...

A Cisitalia* 202 Spider Nuvolari is a rare sight.  Named in honor of veteran GP pilot Tazio Nuvolari's 2nd place finish in the 1947 Mille Miglia.  He led the race in his 1100cc spider until a rainstorm, then finished 2nd to an Alfa Romeo 8C-2900B, finishing ahead of many cars with twice the power.  This made Cisitalia's reputation, but most road cars (over 100) were the famous Pinin Farina closed coupe, an example of which can be seen at MOMA in New York. The roughly dozen and a half Nuvolari Spiders and 2 related CMM competition coupes were designed by Giovanni Savonuzzi,  and featured tail fins that were predictive of American designs from a decade later. The 2020 edition of the Mille Miglia Storica will begin in Brescia on October 22, and finish there on October 25...

Footnotes:

This escapist fare is provided as a distraction for those wisely sheltering in place during the current pandemic.  For international medical aid, including aid to Italy, we've made a donation to Médecins Sans Frontieres:


www.msf.org


Organizations providing aid to those recently unemployed as a result of the pandemic-related business and institutional closures include the following:

Center for Disaster Philanthropy (disasterphilanthropy.org)

CDC Foundation. (cdcfoundation.org)

Feeding America. (feedingamerica.org)

Meals on Wheels. (mealsonwheelsamerica.org)

*Cisitalias were featured in "The Etceterini Files, Part 11: Fiats as Fine Art", posted on April 22, 2017. Lancias have been featured in several posts you can find in the Archives, including "Hi-Fi: Racing Red Elephants from Lancia" from October 3, 2016, "Prancing Elephants: Lancia's D Series in the Heroic Days of Road Racing" from Oct. 8, 2016, and "Lost Cause Lancias" from Feb. 15, 2018. Lancias and Alfa Romeos were both featured in "Concorso Italiano 2018 Review" from August 31, 2018 and in "Max Hoffman, an Eye for Cars and the Studebaker Porsche" from May 1, 2016.  Historic Alfa Romeos have been featured more times than I can place in a single footnote, but some rare ones appear on posts for 12-20-17 (designs by Franco Scaglione), 11-28-17 (Alfas by Virgilio Conrero), and on 9-7-15, where the three Bertone Alfa BATs, also designed by Scaglione, are pictured in "One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars."

Photo Credit: 

All photos were supplied by Lt. Jonathan Asbusy, USN.  We want to thank him for his sharp eye for significant old cars, and his careful attention to detail, on land & at sea...