The Mille Miglia car race is part of the romance of motorsport history, not only in Italy, where the race took place, but in all parts of the world where there are people who think that cars can be more interesting than simple transportation. It encapsulates the passions of a time when cars were allowed to be exciting and racing on normal roads was free to stir the spirit.
The Mille Miglia was conceived as an open road race, that is, it took place on normal roads through the villages and countryside of Italy. Spectators felt they were an integral and important part of the event as they saw beautiful machines moving at the fastest possible speed through their own villages, past their own front gates and down their familiar lanes. La Mille Miglia brought together the Italian people, the Italian landscape and the legendary cars who participated in a memorable event.
The first race of the Italian Grand Prix was held near the northern Italian city of Brescia in 1922, but the Royal Automobile Club of Italy decided to move it to a circuit near Milan. This decision infuriated Brescia’s motorsport enthusiasts, who retaliated by coming up with an alternative event that would be at least equally noteworthy. They wanted an event that would support the Italian motor industry by bringing the cars to the people running the race on common roads and demonstrating the durability and reliability of the products through holding a long distance race that would be an endurance test like as well as speed.
There were several people involved, but the main promoters and agitators were “the four musketeers” Franco Mazotti, Count Aymo Maggi di Gradella, Renzo Castagneto and Giovani Canestrini. The race was to cover a large area of Italy and would follow a route that went from Brescia to Milan and back to Brescia via a different path, a distance of about 1,600 kilometers. When it came to choosing the name, one of them pointed out that the distance was approximately 1,000 miles and although the Italians used to use the kilometer as their unit of measurement, the Romans used the mile. They felt that by naming the breed “Mille Miglia” they would be invoking the ancient traditions of Rome, which was a popular sentiment among the people involved, many of whom were supporters of Mussolini’s fascist party, which often referred to the glories of Italy. in the Roman Period.
Fortunately, among the first organizers there was a lot of experience and useful experience, so the first Mille Miglia event, which took place in 1927, was a great success and attracted a lot of attention. There were only three registrations from outside Italy, but the event succeeded in its goal of raising awareness of Italian car manufacturers. The race was so successful that Mussolini himself ordered it to be held annually.
From 1928 to 1938 the race took place every year and was one of the spectacular annual events of world motorsport, which, like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Targa Florio and the Carrera Panamericana, helped to consolidate the great names of the large car manufacturers. like Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Jaguar and Aston Martin in the public mind. However, these prewar years were fraught with difficulties. The world economic crisis of 1929 affected many of the participating teams and the sanctions imposed on Italy after Mussolini’s decision to occupy Ethiopia in 1936 caused a severe shortage of gasoline and tires. However, the Mille Miglia became a motorsport legend with stories like Tazio Nuvolari’s victory in 1930. Nuvolari would drive at night behind the leader and keep the lights off for a long distance so that his opponent, Varzi, would not I would see it coming. He only turned them back on once he got past Varzi and won.
The race being an open road race where race cars mingled with everyday traffic it had always been a safety concern from its early days. In the 1938 race tragedy struck. A car ran off the road in Bologna and killed ten bystanders, seven of whom were children. Mussolini immediately intervened, forbidding the race to be repeated.
However, the spirit of the Mille Miglia was too powerful and Mussolini revived it once again in 1940 after the outbreak of WWII as a propaganda tool in an empty attempt to show the world that despite the war, the life continued as usual in Italy. The race did not take place on an open road but on a public road circuit that had been closed for the occasion and the competitors completed nine circuits of the course. Most of the cars were entered by Italian teams, but there were some French and German participants. The Italians were completely outmatched by entries from BMW from Germany. A BMW won the race and his teammate came third. The second BMW was alleged to have been slowed down on orders from Berlin so that the Italians were not completely humiliated by their war allies.
After the end of the war, the new democratic government was eager to show that they could handle things at least as well as the fascists and revived the Mille Miglia once more in 1947, allowing the event to overcome the political stain of its origins. At first it was a troublesome undertaking because Italian roads and bridges were in very bad shape as a result of the war and there were even bandits in the mountains who would attack road traffic. Despite these initial difficulties, the race quickly became popular once again attracting international registrations.
In 1949 a new way of numbering race cars was introduced. Slower cars with smaller engines started to leave Brescia at one-minute intervals starting at 9pm. The cars would run through the night until the more powerful ones would leave the next morning. The car number was the time it left Brescia, so, for example, a car that left at 7:22 am would have the number 722 and one that left at 10:30 the night before would have the number 1030. This system made things easier for viewers. to see how well the cars did in the race.
The Mille Miglia and other racing events helped stimulate a new confidence in the Italian motor industry after the war. Not only were the major manufacturers there with a strong presence, but there were also a host of small sports car manufacturers often affectionately known as the ‘etceterinis’. These small manufacturers built small sports cars mainly from Fiat components and managed to make them exciting machines that had their fans not only in Italy but also in the United States. Among the most important of these brands was OM, dating back to the early days of Mille Miglia and Cisitalia, whose Model 202 designed by the great Milanese car designer, Pnin Farina, was hailed as the forefront of car design when it appeared. in 1947 and was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Other smaller firms, such as OSCA and Stanguellini, also had real enthusiasts who made wonderful little machines. Abarth started as one of the etceterini companies before being taken over by Fiat and becoming its in-house high-performance department.
The Mille Miglia was always an open road race in which the participants pledged not to break any of the Italian rules of the road, although it was always difficult to see how they could participate in a race without doing so. It was not until 1953 that the entire route was closed to public traffic while the race was taking place. Memories of the terrible 1938 accident were swept under the carpet, but tragedy struck again in 1957. A Ferrari driven by Spanish driver Alfonso de Portago left the road in the town of Guidizzola near Mantua killing the driver, co-driver and nine spectators including five children. This time common sense intervened and the government banned all races on public roads.
Although the glory days were over, the Mille Miglia would not disappear. In the years 1958, 1959 and 1961, the organizers held a Mille Miglia Rally as a kind of endurance test with the cars respecting speed limits and other rules of the road between test stages. The public did not respond to this way of doing things which was considered unexciting and lost interest.
Still, the Mille Miglia was a strong memory in Italian culture and was revived once again in 1977 as a classic car rally limited to cars manufactured in the period when it was a full-blown race, that is, between 1927 and 1957. This even has many participants from around the world and the parade of hundreds of stunning classic cars is, in its way, as moving as the original race. Perhaps now it is more about entertainment and tourism than motor racing, but it shows that the car can still be a beautiful thing and capture the imagination just as it did in earlier times.