Mille Miglia 2017

I've moved 500km away from my home town to live in this place to work/study and today, the 90th Mille Miglia is passing through here, few meters from my house. These are some of the 150 Ferrari and Mercedes cars that were part of a support event that are "opening the way" for the historic cars, running on roughly the same route.

Among the many modern cars (including a really rare SLR '722 Edition', the spider version of the SLR supercar, inspired by Moss' 1955 300 SLR), there were obviously some older cars, including Mercedes 195 SL and 300 SL, a super rare Ferrari 365 (precursor of the Daytona 365 and 365 GTB/4), not one but 3 Ferrari Dino 206, at least 2 Ferrari 308 (one spider, one coupé with a 4/cam engine), 2 Ferrari 512 (one BB and one TR) and the best of them all: A Ferrari F50 and a Ferrari F40.

What captured my interest among the modern ones, one of the Ferrari 360 Modena was painted in N.A.R.T. blue, really nice, reminishing of the shade of blue used on the very first 250 GTO, the 250 Prototipo that only raced once at Sebring in 1963 or so. And one of the AMG was a competitor of the Gunball 3000 with a tribute livery to the 300 SEL that won the Spa 24 Hours O/A in 1970.

You can find my album here (for now, there should be around 65 photos, if you see less, just wait a bit and come back later, OneDrive sucks at processing data, but it's the faster way for me to upload stuff between the phone and the computer): https://1drv.ms/f/s!Aqj5PKufoHLfiHRnaZu1IGEMuKoI

Now I must head back to where I was standing previously, as I'm typing this the first "proper" MM cars scheduled to arrive should be due soon. 450 cars in total, Jochen Mass (!) is driving one of the 300 SL. When I'll be back, I'll upload the rest of the pictures.

Just a sample, there was probably a billion dollars worth of cars here. The Mercedes were parked in the bottom area, but by the time I took this photo they had already left because I was relocating myself aswell to get a good spot to see these cars go by.

Sounds like a great day!!!

Excellent job, Zexer! Well done! This way we can be with you seeing all those amazing cars, almost in real time.

Added another 150 photos or so of the classic cars going by. They're currently processing.

Unfortunately I'm not a photographer and I couldn't get a good shot (only managed to get the wing), but a D-Type went by with the #15 on the fin, and that car was Chassis #XKC404, an ex-works car from Le Mans 1954. Sticking with Le Mans, another ex-works Jaguar was there, There was also a Lotus XI and a super rare Aston Martin DB2/4. A lot of Ferrari, Alfa, Lancia, Maserati as you would expect in Italy, but the loudest of them all was an ex-Briggs Cunningham Ferrari 375, it backfired right where I was standing, it felt like a bomb exploding. Mercedes was strongly present as always with an entire fleet of Gullwings 300 SL, which were driven by Jochen Mass, Adrian Sutil, Toto Wolff and other random people. The legendary ex-works/von Trips 300 SL #417 from 1956 was also present as always. Porsche was strongly represented aswell, mainly with 356s, but 550s were there aswell.

I was also "lucky" enough because two cars retired right next to me, first it was a lovely Alvis from 1935-36 owned by a Dutch team that arrived at the hairpin in the back of the photos and got stuck there. Spectators helped them push it back, but it stopped next to me with a bad smell and a broken clutch. It took their support team 30 minutes to arrive and after an hour of trying to fix it they gave up. Look at the size of those brakes!

Then a rare Ferrari 250 GT owned by an Italian team from Florence stopped in front of the Alvis because they had a brake failure and from where I was standing onwards, it's all downhill until the next town, so going around tight mountain roads with no brakes is not fun.

If you see a photo of a military Jeep, don't be surprised, this year they added a special class for ex-Army vehicles and there were 20 of them, of various kinds.

This is it, I would've liked to take more photos, but the battery was running low and the memory was full.

Zexer,
thank you for these superb photos, a great record of these old racers.

ney.dias wrote:

  Excellent job, Zexer! Well done! This way we can be with you seeing all those amazing cars, almost in real time.

Reall good stuff!!!! Was that a Jaguar SS100 that was broken down?

No, it was a 1935-1936 Alvis owned by a Dutch team.

I should have looked at the full picture instead of the thumbnails and I would have seen the Alvis badge on the top of the grill.

It is very much like the Jaguar SS100 though.

thanks for the pics Exer;
Apparently there was a class for the military vehicles in the post war M.M, and was discontinued in the early 50s, I suppose a jeep would be one of the most reliable vehicle and quite fast with overdrives ?

framroze wrote:

thanks for the pics Exer;
Apparently there was a class for the military vehicles in the post war M.M, and was discontinued in the early 50s, I suppose a jeep would be one of the most reliable vehicle and quite fast with overdrives ?

Mmmmm... I don't think a Jeep would be very fast at all because of their gearing for rough terrain and those tyres would also be a drag on tarmac.

Spectacular!!!
Thank you very-very much!!