'Mille Miglia' another new year!

                                         Burlington Dairy January 2009.

 

Thurs.01.01.09. The year has started badly with a raging head from the revelries of the previous night but mainly because there has been no movement on the project over the festive or even the weeks before. Paul has been closed for this period so I have not been able to chase up the engine rebuild.

The only bright note has been the emergence of perhaps another target; the ‘Mille Miglia’ rally in Italy. There has been a recent show where celebrity chef ‘James Martin’ entered using a 1948 Maserati. He bought his vehicle for £650,000 from an Italian dealer, had the car totally rebuilt at a cost of £200,000 but after only 120 miles into the rally the engine broke a valve, which could not be repaired or replaced dramatically he found himself out of the race after only a few hours. The big wuss melted into a blubbering wreck. Understandable I suppose having shelled out nearly one million quid with the nine months of planning to drive so few miles. He must have money to ‘piss’ away.

The original race began in 1927 when after losing the Italian Grands Prix to Monza the town of Brescia decided to have its own race; being over 1000 Roman Miles it became known as the Mille Miglia. The race took on various guises as well as numerous routes over the initial years but it was later established to run a circular course heading first of all south to Rome looping north to Brescia for the finish. It has been since established as a ‘rally’ as opposed to a race when in 1957 the drivers of a Ferrari, Alfonso de Portago and his navigator Edmund Nelson, ploughed into 8 spectators in the tiny village of Guidizzolo due to a blown tyre. From 1958 it has remained in the form of time trials rally where cars leave every 30 seconds at each stage, the least powerful beginning first. To qualify the cars must have been constructed between 1927 and 1957, plus an £8000 entrance fee is required upon selection.

Last year the 2008 the race began in May from Brescia to Verona, Ferrara, San Marino, Urbina, Assisi then finally into Rome. On the return leg the drivers proceed to Sienna, Florence, Modena and then into Brescia. The rally was won again by an Italian team comprising of Luciano and Antonio Viara in a 1928 Alfa Romeo 6C 1500 sport. The only other winners who were not Italian had been two Germans drivers, but in 1955 Sterling Moss and Denis Jenkinson in a 300SLR Mercedes Benz won the race at a record average speed of 99.5 mph. This speed has since never been beaten. I may fly a kite this evening in the Oak to see if Chris bites. We could aim for next May perhaps join the ‘Mille Miglia’? but only after the rally has finished; for two reasons, the Burlington is post 1957, but more relevantly, I don’t have the eight grand entrance fee.

Mon.06.01.09. Everyone has officially returned to work today so I took the opportunity to speak to Paul regarding the state of the engine. He confirmed that as far as he was concerned the block is completed but he was waiting for instructions regarding the head. Chris obviously had not past on my request to totally rebuild the top end; as a result the work has not yet been started. I leave for France tomorrow, for at least one month, by which time I trust everything should be in place.

Yesterday I planted the seed of the ‘Miglia Mille’ but it fell on deaf ears.