MILLE MIGLIA AVVENTURE

WHAT A great adventure for a comparison test! Take cars built in five different countries, go to Italy and follow the route of the famed Mille Miglia. As it worked out, there were encounters with officialdom, poverty, misdirection, kindness, miscommunication—and a call to the Great Beyond?

Talk about picturesque locales! Our five cars pose in a northern Italian village. This and other images from R&T, April 1986.

We picked up the Chevrolet Corvette, Nissan 300ZX and Jaguar XJ-S directly after the 1985 Frankfurt Auto Show. Heading south, we added a Porsche 944 Turbo from Zuffenhausen and an Alfa Romeo GTV6 from its Arese facility.

There is more than one way to empty out a gelateria.

We met up in Brescia, start and finish of the 1927 – 1957 Mille Miglia road races as well as its latter-day retrospettiva. In fact, Constantino Franchi, one of the retrospettiva organizers, kindly provided route books and made restaurant/hotel reservations for us based on the 1985 event.

After a hard day’s work.

Piece of cake. Actually, tiramisu.

A Swiss shake-down: The first adventure was thanks to Swiss border guards who didn’t think much of the Vette’s Michigan plates and American insurance. A short-term green card cost $75, the first of the trip’s many cash disbursements. Credit cards weren’t all that popular in 1986, of which more anon.

Our route. The real Mille Miglia, 1927 – 1957, was non-stop; the retrospettiva, a long weekend. No fools, us; we were on the road for a week.

Officer Friendly in Firenze: Though we had Mille Miglia maps, the city directions were of little use. (They close down streets for the retrospettiva, but not for the likes of us.) In general, we followed Centro Città signs, then picked up the route to our next village, town or city.

This worked fine until Florence, where our five cars started meeting each other going different directions. Near one of these random encounters, I asked a cop directing traffic for the road to Siena.

He pointed it out, which necessitated various U-turns for our five cars. I motioned “OK?” He nodded. I pointed around me and asked “Cinque macchine OK?” He laughed, stopped traffic and urged us through, con brio.

Nowhere but Italy.

So who has 281,000 lire?

Gas (and cash) hogs: Our cars were hardly fuel sippers, particularly along a Mille Miglia route. Thus, especially for the Jaguar and Vette, gasoline stops were frequent and almost invariably cash deals. What with this (and our Swiss shake-down), we found ourselves calling the office regularly to have more money wired to our next hotel.

No mean feat in pre-cellphone days. “Anybody got any gettoni?” (See http://wp.me/p2ETap-2pJ for more on these Italian payphone tokens.) In fact, on our post-trip car returns, we had the choice of paying Autostrada tolls or refueling the thirstiest cars—but not both. I drove the Jag on secondary roads to avoid toll booths.

Pre-navigation-system, there were these things called “road signs.”

A call (to the grave?): Late in the trip, I placed a phone call to Constantino Franchi, our Brescia contact: “Buono giorno. Signor Franchi, per favore.”

A woman’s Brescian response was lost on me, and I responded, “Parla inglese? Signor Franchi, please.”

Haltingly, but loads better than my Italian: “I am Mrs. Franchi, but my husband, he is dead.”

“Oh, my. I am so sorry.”

“He is dead for 20 years.”

“But I spoke with Constantino earlier this week.”

“Ah. He is my cousin. I will get him.” ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2014