The Mille Miglia is here

the course marker

As a petrol head who carries a little custom made badge of the Mille Miglia on his Porsche 550 replica, one can imagine that when this historic race comes around he'd be exited. Italy's historic Mille Miglia race, a 1.000 mile public road race which started on Thursday, May 14th, continues this weekend. And even though the cars no longer go flat out, it is still a race that draws tens of thousands of spectators.

The classic car rally started in the city of Brescia in Northern Italy, and passes through the following cities: Verona, Rimini, San Marino, Macerata, Teramo, Rieti, Rome, and then back to Brescia through Ronciglione, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, Pama, and Bergamo.

First held in 1927, the annual race ran through 1957, and was reinstated as a regular event in 1977. This year it features 357 classic and vintage cars dating back to at least 1957.

A record that remains unbeaten is Sir Stirling Moss victory in a Mercedes-Benz 300SLR at the 1955 Mille Miglia. The 25 year old driver and his co-driver Denis Jenkins roared 992 miles in just a little more than 10 hours. Their average speed was 98.53 mph!! To commemorate this a video was made which can be seen by clicking here.

One little known fact about this unique race is the car's numbering. Unlike modern day rallying, where cars are released at one-minute intervals with the larger professional class going before the slower cars, in the Mille Miglia the smalled displacement cars started first. And from 1949, cars were assigned numbers according to their start time. For example the 1955 Moss/Jenkins car, #722, left Brescia at 7:22, while the previous slower cars had started at 21:00 the previous day.

To follow the race, please go to the Jalopnik webpage, by clicking here.

Video credit: Petrolicious/ Mercedes-Benz