Driving the Mille Miglia

Along with seeing all the other vintage cars in the Mille Miglia, especially the rarer ones, the most memorable feature of the event was the enthusiasm of the spectators. Along remote stretches of road there might be no spectators, but at the entrance of almost every agglomeration, be it big or small, smaller groups of spectators would appear, and as we approached a city or town center, the groups became crowds. In several town or city centers, there were also barricades to separate the vehicles and the spectators.

The excitement of the spectators was palpable and very inspiring. They were not just cheering. They were calling out: “Viva Alfa Romeo!” Others urged us to go faster (what a change from spectators at some of our AONE rural car tours!). Several times we heard—much to our disappointment—people yelling out, as our 1900 Sprint drove by: “Giulietta Sprint!”

Spectator Enthusiasm at Loreto

On the second day, in the piazza della Madonna, the square in the center of Loreto, near the Adriatic coast, we stopped for a moment to switch drivers, to stretch our legs, and to take a photo or two. (This square is the location of the Santa Casa, the Nazareth house of the Virgin Mary that angels are said to have miraculously transported to Italy during the 13th century.) Upon our arrival, spectators immediately gathered around to take photos and to ask about the car. Two Red Cross volunteers came over to chat with us, and it turned out that one of them had studied dentistry at Harvard and knew Boston well. At the same time, a little girl, who might have been five or six years old, was playing at taking photos with her plastic toy camera. Her father asked us if it would be OK if he took her photo (with his smart phone, not with the toy plastic camera) standing next to the car. Not only were we perfectly happy to oblige, but we asked her to sit in the driver’s seat and to pretend to drive the car. The father, beaming like he was in seventh heaven, eagerly took advantage of this unhoped-for photo op! Two days later, we gave the same opportunity to another little girl. And on the last full night, as we pulled into Milan’s famous piazza del Duomo, a young woman with her daughter called out to us from the other side of the barricade that her grandfather had once had the same kind of car. (Of course I did not ask her to verify if his car was a rare 1900 Pininfarina coupe, as if he had owned but a Giulietta Sprint, we did not want to ruin her excitement.) When I asked her where the car was now, she unfortunately did not know. However, clearly she would have loved it if his car had remained in the family.

When I first saw cheering spectators along our route, I assumed that those who turned out would mostly be much older people, mostly men who had remembered being taken before 1957 by their fathers or grandfathers to watch the real Mille Miglia race go by (much as an American father or grandfather might take children or grandchildren to their first major league baseball game). But as far as I could tell, the spectators were equally divided among men and women, girls and boys, young and old. Everyone appeared enthusiastic. We passed at one point by a lone house by the edge of the road. A 30-something-ish woman stood alone in front, jumping up and down like Carlton Fisk hitting the winning home run of the sixth game of the 1975 World Series. This was genuine enthusiasm, and it was most inspiring.

More Spectator Enthusiasm, the Barista Alfista!

In another heart-warming instance, when we stopped for a quick coffee (and toilet break) in a large town, during the third day, we happened to park just past a café. When we walked in, the owner came bounding out toward us from behind the counter, crying out: “Alfa Romeo!” He proceeded then to show us that the walls of his café were hung with photos of all the Alfas that had been in his family. On the wall behind the counter was a large Alfa Romeo sign. After we drank our espressos, we suggested that he come out and that we photograph him with our car. No, he said, my wife will take the photo, and the three of us [the café owner, Stefan, and me] will be next to the car.

Many was the time, in the center of a village, when we hesitated as to which turn to take. Every one of these times the spectators loudly called out to us and pointed to the correct turn. I wondered if ever spectators would cruelly point participants the wrong way or take down or move the red-arrow 1000 Miglia signs. But no. Clearly the Mille Miglia Storica is sacrosanct. The locals wouldn’t point a Mille Miglia participant in the wrong direction any more than they would send the Pope down the wrong road!

The spectator enthusiasm peaked during the final day, the half day from Milan back to Brescia. The applause, if anything, was louder, as if the spectators sensed that we had completed the greater part of a marathon and were about to take the final, victory lap. That final day indeed did have the feeling of a victory parade. We didn’t want to jinx anything, but we certainly felt as if we had completed the toughest part of the event, something like how the Tour de France cyclists must feel on the final day, from Versailles to Paris; if they’ve made it to Versailles, they’ll make it to Paris. As we advanced on that last morning from Milan toward, first, the hill town of Bergamo, and then Brescia itself, we had a very similar feeling, and that feeling was only heightened by the increased enthusiasm of the spectators.

Each day’s driving was divided into three to five sectors, and at the end of each sector there would usually be an elaborate checkpoint, with crowds, grandstands, and announcers, calling out the details of each passing car, i.e.: “numero due cinque tre, Alfa Romeo mille nove cento, gli Americani Stefan Gavell e Pierre Walker.” Also at these checkpoints was usually someone passing out swag to each car, sometimes just a bag full of tourist information about the region, but at other times gourmet pasta or a special Mille Miglia magnum of Chianti Classico. On the sunny days (i.e. the hotter last three days of the event) what was most welcome were the bottles of chilled water and/or fruit juices that were handed to us.

We were constantly impressed by the event’s excellent organization. All the participants (including the many support vehicles) had been pre-assigned to hotels, and at those hotels we always found that our reservation was in order. Lunches were served in city centers (Macerata on the second day, Siena on the third day, and Alessandria on the fourth day). The same caterers moved each day and set up in time to feed what must have been around a thousand people. The people staffing the checkpoints also moved with the event. The motorcycle police were from Brescia and followed the entire event as well. In Rome, they escorted several hundred grouped participants from the Villa Borghese Gardens, down the via Veneto and the via del Corso, through piazza Venezia, past the Campidoglio and the Colosseum, and then to our hotels (which were near the Fiumicino airport), in an impressive display of organization (honed, perhaps, while escorting the motorcades of visiting dignitaries to Rome) and in all of about twenty minutes. Who ever doubted that the Italians could pull things off? Well, these Italians certainly know how to organize the Mille Miglia.