Once Upon Time in Italy - Millemiglia on Millecavalli

1937 Bmw on Millemiglia _ Italy

he Mille Miglia (Italian pronunciation: [ˈmille ˈmiʎʎa], Thousand Miles) was an open-road endurance race which took place in Italy twenty-four times from 1927 to 1957 (thirteen before the war, eleven from 1947).

Like the older Targa Florio and later the Carrera Panamericana, the MM made Gran Turismo (Grand Touring) sports cars like Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ferrari, Maserati and Porsche famous.Contents


Car numbering

Unlike modern day rallying where cars are released at one minute intervals with the larger professional class cars going before the slower cars, in the Mille Miglia the smaller displacement slower cars started first. This made organisation simpler as marshalls did not have to be on duty for as long a period and it minimised the period that roads had to be closed. Since 1949 cars were assigned numbers according to their start time. For example, the 1955 Moss/Jenkinson car, 722, left Brescia at 7:22 a.m., while the first cars had started at 9 p.m. the previous day. In the early days of the race even winners needed 16 hours or more, so most competitors had to start before midnight and arrived after dusk - if at all.

From 1927 to 1957, the race took the lives of a total of 56 people